better off for it. Your father now—what does he make out to do in Indiana?" 

 "Father is in the grain business," replied Bob with a smile. 

 "The grain business, is he? An' likely he sets in an office all day long, in out of the fresh air," continued Jan with contempt.  "Plumb foolish I call it, when he could be livin' in Wilton an' fishin', an' clammin', an' enjoying himself. That's the way with so many folks. They go kitin' off to the city to make money enough to buy one of them automobiles. You won't ketch me with an automobile—no, nor a motor-boat, neither; nor any other of them durn things that's goin' to set me livin' like as if I was shot out of the cannon's mouth. What's the good of bein' whizzed through life as if the old Nick himself was at your heels—workin' faster, eatin' faster, dyin' faster? I see nothin' to it—nothin' at all." 

 At the risk of rousing the philosopher's resentment, Bob burst into a peal of laughter. 

 "But ain't it so now, I ask you? Ain't it just as I say?" insisted Janoah Eldridge.  "Argue as you will, what's the gain in it?" 

 To the speaker's apparent disappointment, the citizen from Indiana did not accept the challenge for argument but instead observed pleasantly: 

 "I'll wager you will outlive all us city people, Mr. Eldridge." 

 "Course I will," was the old man's confident retort.  "I'll be a-sailin' in my dory when the whole lot of you motor-boat folks are under the sod. You see if I ain't! An' speakin' of motor-boats, Willie—I s'pose you ain't done nothin toward tacklin' Zenas Henry's tribulations with that propeller, have you?" 

 The question was unexpected, and Willie colored uncomfortably. He was not good at dissembling. 

 "'Twould mean quite a bit of thinkin' to get Zenas Henry out of his troubles," returned he evasively.  "'Tain't so simple as it looks." 

 Moving abruptly to the work-bench he began to overturn at random the tools lying upon it. 

 Something in this unusual proceeding arrested Jan's attention, causing him to glance with suspicion from Robert Morton to the inventor, and from the inventor back to Robert Morton again. The elder man was whistling "Tenting To-night," an air that had never been a favorite of his; and the younger, with self-conscious zeal, was shredding into bits a long curl of shavings. 

 Prev. P 35/181 next