Now, don't
hurry. What most killed Swallow was just this: He hated Pole like poison,
and when he got a five hundred dollar mortgage-grip on Pole's pasture
meadow, he kept that butcher-man real uneasy. When you were all away,
Swallow began to squeeze--what those lawyers call 'foreclose.' It's
just some lawyer word for robbery."
"It's pretty bad, Mrs. Crocker, but two people are waiting for you and
this isn't exactly Government business."
"Got to hear the end, Captain."
"I suppose so--what next?" Dixy wondered why the spur touched him even
lightly.
"Pole, he told Mrs. Penhallow all about it, and she wasn't as glad to
help her meat-man as she was to bother Swallow, so she took over the
mortgage. When the Squire first came home from Washington and wasn't like
he was later, she told him, of course. Now everybody knows Pole's ways,
and so the Squire he says to me--he was awful amused--'Mrs. Crocker, I
asked Mrs. Penhallow how Pole was going to pay her.' She said she did put
that at Pole, and he said it wouldn't take long to eat up that debt at
Grey Pine. He wouldn't have dared to speak like that to your aunt if she
hadn't got to be so meek-like, what with war and bother." By this time
Dixy was with reason displeased and so restless that Mrs. Crocker let the
reins drop, but as John Penhallow rode away she cried, "The price of
meats at Grey Pine has been going up ever since, until Miss Leila--" The
rest was lost to the Captain.
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