, a hint
of coldness in his voice. "I shall simply introduce you for what you
are, Mr. Galbraith's friend--"

"And yours," smiled Mr. Snelling, graciously placing a hand on the
young man's shoulder.

It was unaccountable, absurd, that Bob should have shrunk at the touch;
nevertheless he did so.

"Don't you think," he replied abruptly, "that the sooner we go in and
get to work the better? How long do you expect to be able to stay
here?"

Again the color crept into Snelling's cheek, but this time he was quite
master of himself.

"I cannot tell yet. It will depend to some extent on how we get on."

"I suppose you really can't be spared from the Long Island plant a
great while."

"As to that, Mr. Galbraith is all-powerful," was his smiling answer.
"What he wills must be arranged. Fortunately just now business is
running slack, at least my part of it is. Most of our contracts are
well on the way to completion and others can carry them out, so I can
stay down here as long as is necessary. It can go as my vacation, if
worst comes to worst. Hence you see," concluded he, pulling a spray of
honeysuckle to pieces, "we don't need to rush things."

They entered the gate, passed the low, silvered house now almost buried
in blossoming roses, and following the clam-shell path that led to the
workshop found Willie, his spectacles pushed back from his forehead,
dragging a pile of new boards down from the shelf.

"We have a visitor, Mr. Spence," Bob said. "Mr. Snelling, a friend of
Mr. Galbraith's and--" he paused the fraction of a second, "and of
mine. He has come over to spend the morning and wants to see what
we're doing."

The little old inventor reached out a horny palm.

"I'm glad to see you, sir," affirmed he simply. "Any friend of Bob's
won't want for a welcome here. Set right down an' make yourself to
home, or stand up an' poke found, if it suits you better. That's what
Mr. Galbraith did. I reckon there warn't a corner of this whole place
he didn't fish into. 'Twas amusin' to see him. He said it took him
back to the days when he was a boy. I couldn't but smile to watch him
fussin' with the plane an' saw an' hammer like as if they was old
friends he hadn't clapped eyes on for years."

"It does feel good to handle tools when you haven't done so for a long
time," assented Mr. Snelling.

"Likely you yourself, sir, ain't had a hammer nor nothin' in your hands
for quite a spell," went on Willie, with a