“Does that money look like a joke?” demanded Bob Dallow. “Here, that’s your share, two hundred dollars. Count it, and then I’ll tell you how this little fortune came to travel down to Woodville with me.”
Bob removed the banknotes from one flap of the pocketbook and pushed them across the table to Ben. The latter merely fumbled them. He was fairly stunned at the sensational actions of his relative.
“It’s all along of that whistle of yours, just as I said,” declared Bob. “When I left here two months ago it was to take a job as chauffeur, you remember.”
“Yes,” nodded Ben.
“It was an easy job and a paying one, so easy that I began to get fat and lazy. The man I worked for had a lot of sporty friends, and they got to be such wild company I concluded to strike out for something better. I got word of a nice family at Springfield wanting a chauffeur. When I got there I found the place filled. I hadn’t much ready cash in my pocket. I’d made fine wages, but I spent it laying in a good stock of clothes. At the end of the week I was pretty near at the end of my rope financially. One evening I was consoling myself driving away the blues with some cheerful tunes on one of your whistles, when a big idea struck me.”
“About the whistle?” inquired Ben.
“Just that. When I began outlining plans for making my fortune out of the little device, so many ideas came to me that I began to think I was a natural born promoter. Well, the next morning I swept away all the dreamy schemes from the proposition and went to work in a sensible business-like way.”
“What did you do, Bob?”
“I knew a young lawyer in Springfield, and I was sure he would give me his opinion free gratis. He did. After he had heard my story, and had inspected the whistle, and had looked up what he called authorities on the subject, he told me he didn’t believe a patent on the whistle would hold water.”
“Oh, dear!” commented Ben.