Flood Tide Part 27

They entered the gate, pa.s.sed the low, silvered house now almost buried in blossoming roses, and following the clam-sh.e.l.l 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 h.o.r.n.y 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," a.s.sented 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 benign smile. "They don't look as if you ever had had."

Howard Snelling glanced down at his slender, well-modelled hands with their carefully manicured nails.

"I haven't done much carpentry of late years," he confessed. "It would be quite a novelty were I to be turned loose in a place like this. I should like nothing better."

"You don't say so!" responded Willie, with pleased surprise. "Well, well! Ain't that queer now? I'd much sooner 'a' put you down as a gentleman who wouldn't want to get into no dirt or clutter."

"You don't know me."

"Evidently not," the old man rejoined. "Well, you can have your wish fur's carpenterin' goes. You can putter round here much as you like."

Mr. Snelling moved toward the long workbench.

"This is a neat thing," remarked he, regarding the unfinished invention quite as if he had never heard of it before. "What are you doing here?"

A glow of satisfaction spread over the little fellow's kindly face.

"Why, me an' Bob," he explained, "are tinkerin' with a notion I got into my head a while ago. The idee kitched me in the night, an' I come downstairs an' commenced tacklin' it right away. But I didn't see my course ahead, an' 'twarn't 'til Bob hove in sight an' lent a helpin'

hand that the contraption begun to take shape. But for him 'twould never have amounted to a darn thing, I reckon. I ain't much on the puttin' together, anyhow, an' this was such a whale of a scheme it had me floored. But it didn't seem to strike Bob abeam. He went at it like a dogfish for bait, an' he's beginnin' to tow the thing out of the fog now into clear water."

"It's quite a scheme," observed Snelling, with an a.s.sumed nonchalance.

"How did you happen on it?"

"Them idees just come to me," was the ingenuous reply. "Some brains, like some gardens, grow one thing, some another. Mine seems to turn out stuff like this."

"It's pretty good stuff."

"It's a lot of bother to me sometimes," said the old man simply.

"Still, I enjoy it. I'd be badly off if it warn't for the thinkin' I do. What a marvel thinkin' is, ain't it? You can think all sorts of things; can travel in your mind to 'most every corner of the globe.

You can think yourself rich, think yourself poor, think yourself young, think yourself happy. There's nothin' you want you can't think you have, an' dreamin' about it is 'most as good as gettin' it."

Mr. Snelling nodded.

"Sometimes I think myself an artist, sometimes a musician," went on the wistful voice. "Then again I think myself a great man an' doin'

somethin' worth while in the world. Then there's times I've thought myself with a family of children an' planned how they should learn mor'n ever I did." He mused, then banis.h.i.+ng the seriousness of his tone by an embarra.s.sed laugh added, "I've waked up afterward to think how much less it cost just to imagine 'em."

The heart that would not have been won by the navete of the speaker would have been stony indeed!

Howard Snelling flashed a tribute of honest admiration into the gentle old face.

"Dreams are cheap things," rambled on the little inventor. "Sometimes I figger the Lord gave 'em to those who didn't have much else, so'st to make 'em think they are kings. If you can dream there ain't a thing in all the world ain't yours."

The conversation had furnished Snelling with the opportunity to study more minutely the object on the table, and he now said with a motion of his hand toward it:

"Wouldn't it be rather nice if you had some netting of coa.r.s.er mesh and which wouldn't corrode?"

"Oh, this screenin' ain't what I'd choose," returned Willie, "but 'twas all I had. I ripped it off the front door. Tiny didn't fancy my doin'

it very well. 'Tain't often she's ruffled, an' even this time she didn't say much; still, I could see it didn't altogether please her."

"Tiny?" interpolated Mr. Snelling.

"My aunt, Miss Morton, who keeps house for Mr. Spence," explained Bob with proud directness.

"I wasn't aware you had relatives down here," the boat-builder observed, turning toward Robert Morton with interest. "I imagined you came to the Cape because of the Galbraiths."

"Oh, no. I didn't know the Galbraith's were here until the other day."

"Really!"

The single word was weighted with incredulousness.

"'Twas the funniest thing you ever knew how it happened," put in Willie.

Robert Morton tried to cut him short.

"A package for the Galbraiths was sent to me by mistake; that was how I secured their address," he said.

Snelling looked puzzled.

"That warn't it at all, Bob," persisted Willie. "You ain't tellin' it half as queer as 'twas."

It was useless to attempt to check the little old man now. Artlessly he babbled the story, and Howard Snelling, listening, constructed a good part of the romance interwoven with it from the young man's color and irritation.

"So there were two beauties in the case!" commented he, when the tale was finished.

"There were two silver buckles," came sharply from Bob.

"Which amounts to the same thing," smiled the New Yorker.

Robert Morton vouchsafed no reply.

"Have your friends the Galbraiths met this--other lady?" asked Snelling insinuatingly.

"No, not yet."

"I see."

There was something offensive in the observation; something, too, that compelled Robert Morton even against his will to add with dignity: