They saw the little scientist, with his green specimen box and his butterfly net, talking to Fussel.
“Seems like they have met before,” observed Bob, and indeed the boys noted a cordial greeting between the professor and the foreman of the diggers.
“Oh, the professor would make friends with anybody who could tell him where to find a new kind of pink-nosed mosquito,” laughed Jerry. “Shall we wait for him?”
“Better not,” recommended Ned. “Dr. Snodgrass will want to stay here all day, gathering specimens, and if he has a liking for being eaten up by swamp mosquitoes, I haven’t. He wouldn’t want to come with us, anyhow, very likely. Let’s leave him to his own devices.”
“All right,” agreed Jerry, but, as the tall lad set the motor going he looked back at the place whence they had come. He was somewhat surprised to see Professor Snodgrass and Foreman Fussel in apparently earnest conversation. And the subject seemed to be the yellow clay, for the foreman was holding a lump of it out to the scientist.
[CHAPTER VIII]
SELLING THE LAND
Though Jerry thought it rather strange that the professor and the foreman should be in such close conference, and, though he wondered very much what it could be about, his cogitations did not “get anywhere.”
That is, he could formulate no theory that made matters plain to him. He had an idea, once or twice, of speaking of the matter to his chums, but he did not know exactly how to go about it.