CHAPTER XXIV
That evening the town was all upset.
Folks had bought lots to build houses on, and there had been some houses built besides those Atkins & Phillips were working on, and it looked as if there would be bad times. The new factory wouldn’t ever be built and all the new people wouldn’t move in, and whatever would become of those houses? Nobody would live in them, and they would be pretty close to a dead loss. Everybody felt pretty blue, I can tell you, in spite of their saving the money, they would have paid to Kinderhook.... And that’s how things stood the next day when Mr. Sommers went up to Atkins & Phillips’s shop.
Catty was there alone when Mr. Sommers and I stepped in, and they shook hands.
“The patents are fixed up all right,” says Mr. Sommers. “Where’s your father? Does he know anything about it yet?”
“He doesn’t know a thing, and I don’t know much,” says Catty, with a grin. “You know I haven’t any idee at all what you got in mind.”
“Well, call in your father, and we’ll have a little talk,” says Mr. Sommers.
Mr. Atkins came in and was introduced. He looked kind of surprised, and a lot more so when Mr. Sommers unwrapped the little toy-table Catty’s father had whittled out.
“I understand you made this,” says he. “Whittled her out,” says Mr. Atkins.
“Consider it worth anything?”