"Sure," said Bob with the greatest of alacrity, and he hurried back to where the old flatboat, water-soaked and nearly as black as the swamp upon which it rested, was half submerged beyond the clump of bushes.

When, after infinite labor, he had pushed that clumsy craft afloat upon the bosom of the shallow swamp, Mr. Bubble was on the spot with infinite direction. He told Bob, shouting from the sh.o.r.e, just where to proceed and how, down to the handling of each trowelful of dripping mud, and even to the emptying of each small pailful into the large pail.

"I don't know exactly how I'll get this boxed for shipping," hinted Wallingford, as Bob carried the pail laboriously back to the buggy.

"Right down at the mill," invited Mr. Bubble with great cordiality.

"I'll have my people look after it for you."

"That's very kind of you," replied Wallingford. "I'll give you the address," and upon the back of one of his own cards he wrote: Sig.

Vittoreo Matteo, 710 Marabon Building, Boston, Ma.s.s., U. S. A., care Horace G. Daw.

That night he wrote a careful letter of explanation to Horace G. Daw.

Two weeks to wait. Oh, well, Wallingford could amuse himself by working up a local reputation. It was while he was considering this, upon the following day, that a farmer with three teeth drove up in a dilapidated spring-wagon drawn by a pair of beautiful bay horses, and stopped in front of Jim Ranger's livery and sales stable to talk hay.

Wallingford, sitting in front of the hotel in lazy meditation, walked over and examined the team with a critical eye. They were an exquisite match, perfect in every limb, with manes and tails and coats of that peculiar silken sheen belonging to perfect health and perfect care.

"Very nice team you have," observed Wallingford.

"Finest match team anywhere," agreed Abner Follis, plucking at his gray goatee and mouthing a straw, "an' I make a business o' raisin'

thoroughbreds. Cousins, they are, an' without a blemish on 'em. An'

trot--you'd ought to see that team trot."

"What'll you take for them?" asked Wallingford.

The response of Abner Follis was quick and to the point. He kept a careful apprais.e.m.e.nt upon all his live stock.

"Seven hundred and fifty," said he, naming a price that allowed ample leeway for d.i.c.kering.

It was almost a disappointment to him that Wallingford produced his wallet, counted over the exact amount that had been asked, and said briefly:

"Unhitch them."

"Well!" said Abner, slowly taking the money and throwing away his straw in petulance. It was dull and uninteresting to have a bargain concluded so quickly.

Wallingford, however, knew what he was about. Within an hour everybody in town knew of his purchase. Speculation that had been mildly active concerning him now became feverish. He was a rich nabob with money to throw away; had so much money that he would not even d.i.c.ker in a horse deal--and this was the height of human recklessness in Blakeville.

Wallingford, purchasing Jim Ranger's new buggy and his best set of harness, drove to the Bubbles', the eyed of all observers, but before he had opened the gate Mrs. Bubble was on the porch.

"Jonas ain't at home," she shrilled down at him.

"Yes, I know," replied Wallingford; "but I came to see Miss Fannie."

"She's busy," said Mrs. Bubble with forbidding loftiness. "She's in the kitchen getting dinner."

Wallingford, however, strode quite confidently up the walk, and by the time he reached the porch Miss Fannie was in the door, removing her ap.r.o.n.

"What a pretty turnout!" she exclaimed.

"It's a beauty," agreed Wallingford. "I just bought it from Abner Follis."

She smiled.

"I bet he beat you in the bargain."

"So long as I'm satisfied," retorted Wallingford, smiling back at her, "I don't see why we shouldn't all be happy. Come on and take the first ride in it."

She glanced at her stepmother dubiously.

"I'm very busy," she replied; "and I'd have to change my dress."

"You look good enough just as you are," he insisted. "Come right on.

Mrs. Bubble can finish the dinner. I'll bet she's a better cook, anyhow," and he laughed cordially.

The remark was intended as a compliment, but Mrs. Bubble took distinct umbrage. This was, without doubt, a premeditated slur. Of course he knew that she had once been Mr. Bubble's cook!

"Fannie can't go," she snapped.

Wallingford walked straight up to Mrs. Bubble, beaming down upon her from his overawing height; and for just one affrighted moment Fannie feared that he intended to uptilt her stepmother's chin, or make some equally familiar demonstration. Instead, he only laughed down into that lady's belligerent eyes.

"Yes, she can," he insisted with large persuasiveness. "You were young once yourself, Mrs. Bubble, and not so very long ago."

It was not what he said, but his jovial air of secret understanding, that made Mrs. Bubble flush and laugh nervously and soften.

"Oh, I reckon I can get along," she said.

Miss Fannie, with a wondering glance at Wallingford, had already flown up-stairs, and J. Rufus set himself deliberately to be agreeable to Mrs. Bubble. When Fannie came tripping down again in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time, having shaken herself out of one frock and into another with an expedition which surprised even herself, she found her stepmother actually giggling! And when the young couple drove away in the bright, shining new rig behind the handsome bays, Mrs. Bubble watched after them with something almost like wistfulness. She had been young herself, once--and not so very long ago!

Opposite the Bubble swamp Wallingford stopped for a moment.

"I hope to be a very near neighbor of yours," said he, waving his hand out toward the wonderful deposit of genuine Etruscan black mud. "Did your father tell you about the pottery studios which may be built here?"

"Not a thing," she confessed with a slightly jealous laugh. "Papa never tells us anything at home. We'll hear it on the street, no doubt, as we usually do."

"Your father is a most estimable man, but I fear he makes a grave mistake in not telling you about things," declared Wallingford. "I believe in the value of a woman's intuition, and if I were as closely related to you as your father I am sure I should confide all my prospects to you."

Miss Fannie gave a little inward gasp. That serious tide in the talk, fraught with great possibilities, for which every girl longs and which every girl dreads, was already setting ash.o.r.e.

"You might get fooled," she said. "Father don't think any woman has very much gumption, and least of all me, since--since he married again."

"I understand," said Wallingford gently, and drove on. "Just to show you how _much_ differently I look at things from your father, I'm going to tell you all about the black pottery project and see what you think of it."

Thereupon he explained to her in minute detail, a wealth of which came to him on the spur of the moment, the exact workings of the Etruscan pottery art. He painted for her, in the gray of stone and the yellow of face brick and the red of tiling, the beautiful studio buildings that were to be erected yonder facing the swamp; he showed her through cozy, cheerfully lighted apartments in those studios, where the best trained artists of Europe, under the direction of the wizard, Vittoreo Matteo, should execute ravishments of Etruscan black pottery; he showed her, as the bays pranced on, connoisseurs and collectors coming from all over the country to visit the Blakeville studios, and carrying away priceless gems of the ceramic art at incalculable prices!

The girl drank in all these details with thirsty avidity.

"It's splendid! Perfectly grand!" she a.s.sured him with vast enthusiasm, and in her memory was stored every precious word that this genius had said; and they were stored in logical order, ready to reproduce on the slightest provocation, which was precisely the result which Wallingford had intended to produce.

It was nearing noon now, and making a _detour_ by the railway road they drove up in front of the mill with the spanking bays just as Jonas Bubble was coming out of his office to go to dinner. Hilariously they invited him into the carriage, and in state drove him home.

Wallingford very wisely kept away from the Bubble home that afternoon and that evening, and by the next morning every woman in town had told all her men-folk about the vast Etruscan black pottery project!