'I think you're a genius!' declared Peggy, who was absolutely steeped in admiration.
'Why, no!' said the boy. 'But I reckon to go in for engineering some time, so it's all practice, you see. When I can get some more tools and things I want to set up a hydraulic pump to water the garden. I believe I could put electric light all over the house, if aunt would only let me try.'
'I'm afraid you might blow us all up, my dear boy!' exclaimed the pleasant voice of Miss Forster, who had joined them unobserved. 'So you have been making Peggy's acquaintance? She had better stay to tea, now she is here. I will send a message up to the Abbey to say we are keeping her.'
Peggy beamed with delight, for she wanted to see more of Archie's wonderful work, and also the cakes and jam at the Willows had a reputation for excellence quite unsurpassed in the neighbourhood.
Miss Forster was a little elderly lady, with a neat, bird-like appearance, and a brisk, cheerful manner, who seemed to match the prim, square house with its green door and brass knocker, and white sun-blinds over the windows. Everything about the place was kept in the most exquisite order—never a weed on the paths nor a daisy on the lawns—while indoors the old-fashioned rooms were the very perfection of neatness, and the polish on the Chippendale furniture was a thing to wonder at.
When Miss Forster had adopted her brother's youngest boy from Colorado, her neighbours held up their hands in amazement, and suggested that one of her London nieces would have proved a far more satisfactory companion. But Miss Forster herself thought otherwise.
'My nieces are dear girls,' she said, 'but they take all I say for gospel, and have not an original idea among them. I want some fresh young life in the place, to keep me from quite stagnating. Archie brings a breath of the new world with him, and outside interests which I hope may prevent me from falling into the narrow rut that is so often the fate of elderly spinsters in retired villages. It is quite possible that he may upset the house in some slight degree, but on the whole it is good for me to have my little ways interfered with. One is apt to get into the habit of thinking that the set of a curtain, or a speck of dust on the mirror, are of more importance than the affairs of the universe.'
Since his arrival, Archie had certainly done his best to preserve his aunt from any danger of stagnation, for his fertile brain kept her in a perpetual tremor as to what the 'dear boy' would do next.
'We work everything by machinery out in America, you know, aunt,' he explained. 'And it feels just terribly behind the times to come home and find you jogging on in the same hum-drum way this old country has done since the conquest. I guess if you could come out to Colorado, you'd get an eye-opener!'
Miss Forster opened her eyes wide enough, as it was, to see a neat telephone, made of two empty cocoa-tins and a piece of waxed string, fixed up between the house and the stables, while a small windmill on the scullery roof turned the coffee-grinder in the kitchen, to the huge amazement and delight of the cook. She had gasped a little at the incubator, made of an old biscuit-tin, and placed on the greenhouse pipes.