“Thought Dad wasn’t giving any of his time to oil these days,” she said.  “He told me you and Bob were running the company.”

“Every once in a while he takes an interest.  I prod him up to go out and look things over occasionally.  He’s president of the company, and I tell him he ought to know what’s going on.  So to-day he’s out there.”

“Oh!” Miss Joyce, having learned what she had come in to find out, might reasonably have departed.  She declined a chair, said she must be going, yet did not go.  Her eyes appeared to study without seeing a field map on the desk.  “Dad told me something last night, Mr. Sanders.  He said I might pass it on to you and Bob, though it isn’t to go farther.  It’s about that ten thousand dollars he paid the bank when it called his loan.  He got the money from Buck Byington.”

“Buck!” exclaimed the young man.  He was thinking that the Buck he used to know never had ten dollars saved, let alone ten thousand.

“I know,” she explained.  “That’s it.  The money wasn’t his.  He’s executor or something for the children of his dead brother.  This money had come in from the sale of a farm back in Iowa and he was waiting for an order of the court for permission to invest it in a mortgage.  When he heard Dad was so desperately hard up for cash he let him have the money.  He knew Dad would pay it back, but it seems what he did was against the law, even though Dad gave him his note and a chattel mortgage on some cattle which Buck wasn’t to record.  Now it has been straightened out.  That’s why Dad couldn’t tell where he got the money.  Buck would have been in trouble.”

“I see.”

“But now it’s all right.”  Joyce changed the subject.  There were teasing pinpoints of mischief in her eyes.  “My school physiology used to say that sleep was restful.  It builds up worn-out tissue and all.  One of these nights, when you can find time, give it a trial and see whether that’s true.”

Dave laughed.  The mother in this young woman would persistently out.  “I get plenty of sleep, Miss Joyce.  Most people sleep too much.”

“How much do you sleep?”

“Sometimes more, sometimes less.  I average six or seven hours, maybe.”

“Maybe,” she scoffed.

“Hard work doesn’t hurt men.  Not when they’re young and strong.”

“I hear you’re trying to work yourself to death, sir,” the girl charged, smiling.

“Not so bad as that.”  He answered her smile with another for no reason except that the world was a sunshiny one when he looked at this trim and dainty young woman.  “The work gets fascinating.  A fellow likes to get things done.  There’s a satisfaction in turning out a full day and in feeling you get results.”

She nodded sagely, in a brisk, business-like way.  “I know.  Felt it myself often, but we have to remember that there are other days and other people to lend a hand.  None of us can do it all.  Dad thinks you overdo.  So he told me to ask you to supper for to-morrow night.  Bob will be there too.”