"It is a bully one, anyhow!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bob. "Aren't you curious to hear what Zenas Henry will say when he sees it?"

"I am sorter itchin' to," admitted Willie in less meditative tone.

"Only last night I was thinkin' after I got to bed how would be the best way of givin' it to him. I've sorter set my heart on springin' it on him as a surprise. What's your notion?"

"I think that would be a fine plan," replied Bob, eager to humor the gentle dreamer. "If we could get him and the captains out of the way, it would be good sport simply to fasten the attachment to the boat and wait and see what happened."

"Wouldn't that be the beateree!" chimed in Willie excitedly. His face glowed and he rubbed his hands with honest pleasure. "Wouldn't it, though? We could manage it, too, for Delight could arrange to get Zenas Henry an' the three captains out of the way. She's an almighty good one at keepin' a secret, as I reckon you've found out already."

He stole a sly glance at the young man at his elbow who flushed uncomfortably.

"Yes," he rambled on, "Delight can shut her mouth on occasions like as if it was a scallop sh.e.l.l. The only trouble is she'd oughter close her eyes too, for they talk 'most as well as her tongue does. Likely you've noticed that," he added innocently.

"I--eh--"

"Fur's that goes, your own eyes do somethin' in the speakin' line,"

affirmed Willie, bending to fleck a bit of dust from the appliance before them.

"What!" Robert Morton exclaimed with alarm.

The old inventor nodded gravely.

"Yes," continued he, "now I come to think of it, you've got among the most speakin' eyes I ever see. They kinder bawl things right out."

"What--what--have they--" stammered Bob, crumpling weakly down upon the rickety chair before the stove.

"Bawled? Oh, a lot of things," was the provokingly ambiguous retort.

His companion eyed him narrowly.

"I'm--I'm--in a horrible mess, Willie," he suddenly blurted out quite irrelevently.

"I know it."

Robert Morton gasped, then lapsed into stunned silence.

"Without goin' into any details or discussin' any ladies we know, my advice would be to make a clean breast of the whole thing," the little old man announced, avoiding Robert Morton's eyes and blowing a ring of smoke from his pipe impersonally toward the low ceiling. "Have it out with Zenas Henry an' set yourself right with the Belleport folks. You don't want to do nothin' under cover."

"No, I don't," rejoined the younger man quickly. "The reason I didn't do so in the first place was because Zenas Henry was so upset when he heard about Madam Lee that we--I thought--"

"He's calmed down now, ain't he?"

"Yes, he seems to have accepted the facts, especially as the Galbraiths have not been near him and have let the whole matter drop. Of course that is only a temporary condition, however. Mr. Galbraith has been in New York attending to important matters ever since Madam Lee's death.

What will be done when he returns I do not know; but he will do something--you may be sure of that."

"That ain't no special business of yours or mine, is it?" Willie remarked. "All that concerns you is to let both those men know where you stand--Zenas Henry first, 'cause he's been like a father to Delight; an' Mr. Galbraith afterwards, 'cause--" he hesitated for the fraction of a second, "'cause the Galbraiths are the girl's nearest of kin an' legally, I s'pose, have a right--"

"Yes," interrupted Robert Morton hastily.

"When you get things all squared up, we'll talk more about it,"

continued Willie. "But 'til you do the affair ain't open an' above board, an' I don't want nothin' to do with it. The top of the ocean is good enough for me; I never was much on swimmin' under water."

He broke off abruptly to refill his pipe.

"Now about this motor-boat," he went on crisply, veering to a less delicate subject. "S'pose you fix it up with Delight to keep Zenas Henry an' the three captains away from the beach for a couple of days so'st to give us time to get our invention securely rigged to the _Sea Gull_. She could find somethin' for 'em to do up at the house for that long, couldn't she?"

"I guess so."

"If she can't, Abbie can," chuckled Willie, with a grin. "Abbie Brewster's the most famous woman in the world for settin' folks to work. She's made Zenas Henry clean over since his marriage. Why, I remember the time when you could no more have got him to do a day's work than you could have lined up the fish of the sea in a Sunday-school. But with trainin', Zenas Henry now does his plowin', plantin' an' harvestin' in somethin' approachin' alarm-clock fashion.

Of course, he backslides if he ain't constantly held to it; but knowin'

his past it's a miracle what Abbie's made of him. She ain't never wholly reformed his temper, though. There's plenty of cayenne in that still. I reckon if you was to amputate Zenas Henry's temper you'd find you had took away the most interestin' part of him."

His listener smiled.

"Now you go ahead an' arrange things with Delight, Bob," continued Willie. "An interview with her won't be no great hardship for you, will it? I thought not. An' any fillin' in I can do, I'll do--any fillin' in," he repeated significantly. "You can count on me to plug any gaps that come anywheres--remember that."

"It's bully of you, Willie!" cried Bob, seizing his hand.

"Not a mite," protested the little man, with a deprecating gesture.

"Now that I've got Bart Coffin an' Minnie livin' like turtle doves, an'

Jack Nickerson as good as married to Sarah Libbie Lewis, two of my ships seem to have dropped anchor safe an' sound. I reckon I shan't need to do no more pilotin' there."

The little old inventor stopped a moment, then added:

"Sometimes I figger what I was put in the world for was to do pilot duty. You know there's folks that never own a ship of their own but just spend their days towin' other people's ships into port. They ain't so bad off neither," he went on in a merrier tone, "'cause there's a heap of joy in helpin' some other vessel to make a landin'."

More moved by the words than he would have confessed, Robert Morton watched the bent figure move through the door and out into the sunshine; and afterward, banishing the seriousness of his mood, he climbed the hill to the white cottage, there to evolve with Delight a plot that should hold the men of the Brewster household captive long enough for Willie and himself to attach to Zenas Henry's motor-boat the new invention.

CHAPTER XX

ONE MORE OF WILLIE'S SHIPS REACHES PORT

Three feverish days pa.s.sed, days of constant hard work and myriad trivial annoyances. A train of misadventures had attended the transference of Willie's "idee" to Zenas Henry's boat. Parts had failed to fit, and much wearisome toil had been demanded before the device was actually in place. At last, however, all was ready, and Abbie Brewster, a party to the conspiracy, had on a sunny morning urged her reluctant spouse and the three captains to make a trip out to the Bar for clams. They were none too keen about the proposed expedition, for the weather was warm and their course lay through shallow waters which after the recent storm were turbid with seaweed. Nevertheless, ignoring their unwillingness, Abbie declared she must have the clams, and was not her word law?

Therefore, without enthusiasm, the four fishermen had set forth with their buckets and their clam forks, and it was now a full three hours since the motor-boat that carried them had disappeared around the point of sand jutting into the sparkling waters of the bay.

Bob and Willie, secreted in the workshop, had breathlessly watched the _Sea Gull_ thread her way through the channel and make the curving shelter of the dunes, and ever since the old inventor had sat alert on an overturned nail keg, his binoculars in one hand and his great silver watch in the other, counting the moments until the little craft should return from its momentous cruise. The vigil had been long and tedious, with only the ticking of the mammoth timepiece and the far-off rumble of the surf to break the stillness.

Presently Celestina came from the kitchen into the shop.

"I'm bringin' you a dish of hot doughnuts," she said, a kindly sympathy in her face. "Oughtn't them men to be comin' pretty soon now?"

For the hundredth time Willie raised the gla.s.ses and scanned the shimmering golden waters.

"We should sight 'em before long," he nodded.