The Little Lady of the Big House - Page 52/160

"Oh, Paula," Dick called, as she was fading through the doorway; "I've christened the last boy--he's to be known as 'Oh Ho.' How do you like it?"

Her reply began with a hint of forlornness that vanished with her smile, as she warned: "You will play ducks and drakes with the house-boys' names."

"I never do it with pedigreed stock," he assured her with a solemnity belied by the challenging twinkle in his eyes.

"I didn't mean that," was her retort. "I meant that you were exhausting the possibilities of the language. Before long you'll have to be calling them Oh Bel, Oh Hell, and Oh Go to Hell. Your 'Oh' was a mistake. You should have started with 'Red.' Then you could have had Red Bull, Red Horse, Red Dog, Red Frog, Red Fern--and, and all the rest of the reds."

She mingled her laughter with his, as she vanished, and, the next moment, the telegram before him, he was immersed in the details of the shipment, at two hundred and fifty dollars each, F. O. B., of three hundred registered yearling bulls to the beef ranges of Chile. Even so, vaguely, with vague pleasure, he heard Paula sing her way back across the patio to her long wing of house; though he was unaware that her voice was a trifle, just the merest trifle, subdued.