letters reeked of oil: wells, strikes, gushers, drills, shares, outfits. It was early Oklahoma in the rough. This one was getting five hundred a day out of his well. That one had sunk forty thousand in his and lost out.

“Five hundred what?” Maxine asked. “Forty thousand what?”

“Dollars, I guess,” Milly Pardee answered. “That’s the way your father always talks. I’d rather have twenty-five a week, myself, and know it’s coming without fail.”

“I wouldn’t. Where’s the fun in that?”

“Fun! There’s more fun in twenty-five a week in a pay envelope than in forty thousand down a dry well.”

Maxine was fifteen now.