CHAPTER VI
The Purdues finally came ashore, accompanied by two servants, and occupied the opposite end of the bungalow.
Purdue, retired capitalist, undoubtedly affluent, cherubic, in facial appearance jolly, and with a bare pate to which still appended a slightly curling fringe below his hat, laughed with you, but always there came a shrewd glitter in his eyes when trade matters were broached. The itching palm and a penchant for melons yet to be cut were easily a part of his inherited tendency.
Mother Purdue, muchly inclined toward obesity and cynicism, was a human interrogation point. Both children apparently loved the father best and made of him a chum.
The elder married daughter, Mrs. Potter, was Wellesley finished, and a growing replica of the mother. Her mouth had been spoiled at the foolish age by a constant effort to produce dimples in her cheeks, but matrimony and time had been kind and she was now quite sensible. But sister Norma, a thin, frail slip of a girl—the undoubted makings of a beautiful woman—appeared to have arbitrarily rejected the least desirable tendencies of both parents, by the sacrifice of corpulence.
I was busy with final reports and paid little attention to the new arrivals during the week that followed, but Byng, who ate with me usually, said that they were having the time of their lives, and that papa Purdue had evidently forgotten he had stump land for sale. Their boat drew too much water to navigate the river above, and, at Purdue's suggestion, the moonshiner's old flat-bottomed, square-end, scowlike boat was cleaned out, and, after the motor was overhauled, was used by them for frequent trips of inspection to their property above, a tarpaulin being provided to protect them against the sun.
One mid-afternoon Byng rushed excitedly to the bungalow. He had received a telephone message from the station, for me. It was from headquarters: