ovocation, 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!

CHAPTER XX

WALLINGFORD BEGINS TO UTILIZE THE WONDERFUL
ETRUSCAN BLACK MUD

Wallingford was just going in to dinner when a tall, thin-visaged
young lady, who might have been nearing thirty, but insisted on all
the airs and graces of twenty, came boldly up to the Atlas Hotel in
search of him, and, by her right of being a public character,
introduced herself. She was Miss Forsythe, principal over one other
teacher in the Blakeville public school; moreover, she was president
of the Women's Culture Club!

"It is about the latter that I came to see you, Mr. Wallingford," she
said, pushing back a curl which had been carefully trained to be
wayward. "The Women's Culture Club meets this coming Saturday
afternoon at the residence of Mrs. Moozer. It just happens that we are
making an exhaustive study of the Italian Renaissance, and we have
nothing, _positively nothing_, about the renaissance of Italian
ceramics! I beg of you, Mr. Wallingford, I plead with you, to be our
guest upon that afternoon and address us upon Etruscan Pottery."

Wallingford required but one second to adjust himself to this new
phase. This was right where he lived. He could out-pretend anybody who
ever made pretensions to having a pretense. He expanded his broad
chest and beamed.

He knew but little about art, being only the business man of the
projected American Etruscan Black Pottery Studios, but he would be
more than pleased to tell them that little. He would, in fact, be
charmed!

"You don't know how kind, how good you are, and what a treat your
practical talk will be, I am sure," gurgled Miss Forsythe, biting
first her upper lip and then her lower to make them redder, and then,
still gurgling, she swept away, leaving Wallingford chuckling.

Immediately after lunch he went over to the telegraph office and wired
to the most exclusive establishment of its sort in New York:

E