out from the same model, but no two of 'em will ever be alike. I've
got a little yawl down on the shore I wouldn't take a thousand dollars
for. She's knowin' as if she was alive. I can tell to an inch how
much sail she'll stand an' how much water she'll draw. She answers to
the tiller quick as a child to your voice, too--quicker'n most
children. I've had her for years, an' smooth weather or foul she ain't
never gone back on me. Folks disappoint you sometimes; but a boat
never does." As if sensing that he was venturing on dangerous ground,
he stopped abruptly. "So you build boats, do you?" he commented to
change the subject.

Richard Galbraith nodded.

"That's my calling," he assented. "And since it is, I am in a position
to handle things that have to do with boats of all kinds. That is why
your motor-boat idea has interested me so deeply. I saw its
possibilities from the moment I first laid eyes on it, and I wish to
congratulate you on having given the public such a useful invention."

"It ain't got far toward the public," objected Willie, with a
deprecating shrug of his shoulders.

"But it is going to," Mr. Galbraith declared with promptness. "Bob,
Mr. Snelling and I have taken matters into our own hands and have
ventured to have an application for a patent prepared--description,
claims and all; and after you have sworn to the affidavit and affixed
your signature, we will send it off to Washington, where I haven't a
doubt it will be granted. I thought this would save you the bother of
attending to it yourself."

Poor Willie was too amazed to speak.

"Now Galbraith and Company will want the monopoly of that patent, Mr.
Spence," hurried on the financier. "We are going to make you a
proposition either for the purchase of it outright, or for its use on a
royalty basis."

With a supreme disregard for business, Willie wheeled on him before he
could go further and said simply:

"Law, Mr. Galbraith, you can use the thing an' welcome. Turn out as
many of 'em as you like. It won't make no odds to me. But the
patent--think of havin' a real patent on somethin' I've thought out!
Just you picture it!"

He repeated the words in a soft, musing voice that hushed his hearers
into stillness.

"I never thought to live to see the day anything of mine would be
patented. That means that nobody else anywhere in the world ever was
kitched by that same idee before, don't it? It's sorter--sorter
wonderful an' gr