“Come in, David,” he growled not unkindly; and before Vallory could speak: “Vinnie ’phoned down a few minutes ago to tell me that you’re looking for your father to-morrow. That sounds mighty good to me. We’ll have another chance to renew our youth. You don’t appreciate how much that means; you’re too young. But some day you will.”
David drew up one of the wicker chairs and sat down. The abrupt dip into the purely friendly relations side-tracked his errand, temporarily; but it also gave him time to gather himself for the plunge into the weightier matter.
“Yes,” he assented; “I had a letter this morning. There will be three of them; Dad and my sister and Bert Oswald.”
“You don’t mean John Oswald’s boy?”
“Yes, that is the one. Bert is a lawyer now, in business for himself in Middleboro.”
Eben Grillage wagged his head as one incredulous, and the massive features were relaxed in a reminiscent smile.
“Well, well; the idea of that little red-headed, blue-eyed chap of Oswald’s growing up to be a man and a lawyer! How time does skip along!” Then: “What’s he coming out here for? We don’t need any lawyers on this job—not yet, I hope.”
“Bert says the trip is a vacation excursion for him,” David replied, suppressing Oswald’s true motive. Then he began on his own errand. “I came over here to bother you for a bit of advice on something that I’ve changed my mind about half a dozen times or more. It’s that weak place in the roof of heading Number One that Plegg wrote you about before I came on the job.”
“Well, what about it?”
“At first I was willing to discount all the nervous stories. I spent one entire summer in hard-rock work, and I know how prone the drill crews are to cry ‘wolf’ when they drive through something a little different. But latterly I’ve been a little anxious myself.”