“We ought to make six or seven hundred.”
“Bully!” says I. “And Catty done it, didn’t he? He was the one that thought it up.”
“Catty’s the best man of the three of us,” says Jack.
Just then Mr. Arthur Peabody Kinderhook drove past in a buggy, all dressed up like he was going to a party. He always looked like he was going to a party, that man did. And he didn’t do any work that I could notice. Just lived in the hotel and drove around and made believe he was looking at the town. It kind of leaked out that he was planning on building a big factory and was choosing the best place to put it. He didn’t say much. Nobody knew what he was going to manufacture, and when they asked him he edged away kind of skittish. It got folks all het up over it. Our town was growing as curious as if he was a circus they couldn’t get into and there was a lot of death-defying trapeze performers doing tricks inside all the time.
“Arthur Peabody Kinderhook,” says I, and I told Jack all about him.
We walked back to the store. Catty was reading a letter, and when we came in he looked up with a kind of scowl.
“Letter from the lumber company. They won’t trust us. Say they’ll ship that lumber for Witherspoon’s house, C. O. D., whatever that means.”
“It means we’ll have to pay for it before we can get it,” said Jack.
“But we’ve got to use it before we can get the money to pay for it,” says Catty.
We was all pretty gloomy. It looked right there as if the partnership of Atkins & Phillips was busted, and I guess Phillips thought so for sure. But Catty turned to his Dad.