interrupted Willie eagerly. 

 "That it is perhaps better for me to stay here until we get the invention completed." 

 "You don't mean until the thing's done!" 

 "If it doesn't take too long, yes." 

 "Hurray!" shouted his host.  "That's prime!" he rubbed his hands together.  "Under those conditions we'll pitch right in an' scurry the work along fast as ever we can." 

 Robert Morton looked chagrined. 

 "I don't know that we need break our necks to rush the thing through at a pace like that," he said, fumbling awkwardly with the flowers.  "A few weeks more or less wouldn't make any great difference." 

 "But I thought you said it was absolutely necessary for you to go home—that you had important business in New York—that—" the old man broke off dumbfounded. 

 Bob shook his head.  "Oh, no, I think my affairs can be arranged," was the sanguine response.  "A piece of work like this would give me lots of valuable experience, and I'm not sure but it is my duty to—" 

 The little old inventor scanned the speaker's flushed cheeks, his averted eye and the drooping blossoms in his hand; then his brow cleared and he smiled broadly: 

 "Duty ain't to be shunned," announced he with solemnity.  "An' as for experience, take it by an' large, I ain't sure but what you'll get a heap of it by lingerin' on here—more, mebbe, than you realize." 

 

 

 CHAPTER VI 

 MARRYING AND GIVING IN MARRIAGE 

 That afternoon, after making this elaborate but by no means misleading explanation to Willie, Bob sent off to a Boston jeweler a registered package and while impatiently awaiting its return set to work with redoubled zest at the new invention. 

 What an amazingly different aspect the motor-boat enterprise had assumed since yesterday! Then his one idea had been to humor Willie's whim and in return for the old man's hospitality lend such aid to the undertaking as he was able. But now Zenas Henry's 

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