'My Uncle Ned and my Aunt Bessie,' he said. 'I must go and speak to them.'
He crossed towards the elderly couple, shook hands with the man, who greeted him cordially enough, and submitted to an embrace from the lady. Lavendale could hear, every now and then, scraps of their conversation. Towards its close, his friend turned and beckoned to him. Lavendale, who had been eagerly awaiting a summons, rose at once and approached the trio.
'Aunt,' Moreton explained, laying his hand upon his friend's shoulder, 'this is Mr. Ambrose Lavendale, a graduate of my year at Harvard. Uncle, Lavendale has just returned from Europe and he was talking to me about you. He is like the rest of us, tremendously interested in what all the world is saying about you and your latest discovery.'
Lavendale shook hands with the elderly couple, who greeted him kindly.
'Discovery, eh?' Mr. Moreton observed jocularly.
'That does seem rather an inadequate word,' Lavendale admitted. 'I think one of your own newspapers here declared that you had learnt how to bottle up the lightnings, to——'
'Oh, those damned papers!' Mr. Moreton exclaimed irritably. 'Don't talk to me about them, young fellow.'
'I would much rather talk to you about what they are aiming at,' Lavendale said simply. 'Are you going to give any demonstration, sir—I mean, of course, to the scientific world?'
The inventor glanced up at his questioner with a little twinkle in his hard, blue eyes.
'Say, you've some nerve, young fellow!' he declared amiably. 'However, I am very fond of my nephew here, and if you're a friend of Jim's you shall be one of a very select company to-morrow morning. The scientific world can wait, but I am going to set the minds of the newspaper people at rest. I am going to show them what I can do. I was thinking of asking you, any way, Jim,' he went on, 'and you can bring your friend with you. Twelve o'clock at Riverside Drive.'