"Lots," Ken said hastily. "We've been living royally--wait till you see. Oh, it's really a duck of a place--and Phil's a perfect wonder."
"Applegate Farm. Oh law! Mother dear, I'll have to tell you. It's only that we decided the old house was too expensive for us to run just for ourselves, so we got a nice old place in the country and fixed it up."
"You decided--you got a place in the country? Do you mean to say that you poor, innocent children have had to manage things like _that_?"
"We didn't want you to bother. _Please_ don't worry, now." Ken looked anxiously across the table at his mother, as though he rather expected her to go off in a collapse again.
"Nonsense, Ken, I'm perfectly all right! But--but--oh, please begin at the beginning and unravel all this."
"Wait till we get on the train," Ken said. "I want to arrange my topics. I didn't mean to spring it on you this way, at all, Mother. I wish Phil had been doing this job."
But Ken's topics didn't stay arranged. As the train rumbled on toward Bayside, the tale was drawn from him piecemeal; what he tried to conceal, his mother soon enough discovered by a little questioning. Her son dissimulated very poorly, she found to her amusement. And, after all, she must know the whole, sooner or later. It was only his wish to spare her any sudden shock which made him hold back now.
"And you mean to tell me that you poor dears have been scraping along on next to nothing, while selfish Mother has been spending the remnant of the fortune at Hilltop?"
"Oh, pshaw, Mother!" Ken muttered, "there was plenty. And look at you, all nice and well for us. It would have been a pretty sight to see _us_ flourishing around with the money while you perished forlorn, wouldn't it?"
"Think of all the wealth we'll have _now_," Mrs. Sturgis suggested, "all the hundreds and hundreds that Hilltop has been gobbling."
"I'd forgotten that," whistled Ken. "Hi-ya! We'll be bloated aristocrats, we will! We'll have a steak for dinner!"
"Oh, you poor chicks!" said his mother. She must hear about the Sturgis Water Line, and hints of the Maestro, and how wonderful Phil had been, teaching Kirk and all, and how perfectly magnificent Kirk was altogether--a jumbled rigamarole of salvaged motor-boats, reclaimed farm-house, music, somebody's son at sea, and dear knows what else, till Mrs. Sturgis hardly knew whether or not any of this wild dream was verity. Yet the train--and later, the trolley-car--continued to roll through unfamiliar country, and Mrs. Sturgis resigned herself trustfully to her son's keeping.