IN WHICH THE BRIGHT EYES OF CONSTANCE "RAIN INFLUENCE"
There being no cozy corners aboard Mr. Courtney's snow-white Albatross in which a couple with many important things to say could be free from prying observation, Johnny and Constance behaved like normal human beings who were profoundly happy. They mingled with the gaiety all the way out through the harbor to the open sea, and then they drifted unconsciously farther and farther to the edge of the hilarity, until they found themselves sitting in the very prow of the foredeck with Mr. Courtney and his friend from the West. If they could not exchange important confidences they could at least sit very quietly, touching elbows.
Mr. Courtney's friend from the West was a strong old man with keen blue eyes, who sat all through the afternoon in the same place, talking in low tones with Courtney on such dry and interminable subjects as railroads, mines, freight rates, stocks, bonds and board meetings.
Constance wondered how an otherwise nice old man could reach that age without having accumulated any lighter and more comprehensible objects of interest, and she really doubted the possibility of any man's understanding all the dry-as-dust business statistics with which he was so handy. Suddenly, however, Johnny Gamble awoke from his blissful lethargy and bent eagerly forward.
"Beg pardon, Mr. Boise," he interjected into the peaceful conversational flow of the older men. "Did I understand you to say that the S. W. & P. had secured a controlling interest in the B. F. & N. W.?"
Constance looked at Johnny in dismay. If he, too, intended to talk in nothing but the oral sign language, she had a wild idea of joining the frivolous crowd on the afterdeck, where at least there was laughter.
Mr. Boise looked at Johnny from under shaggy eyebrows.
"It's not generally known," he stated, struggling between a desire to be pleasant to a fellow guest and a regret that he had fancied Johnny absorbed too much in Constance to be interested in sotto voce affairs.
"That's what that territory needs," Johnny briskly commented. "As long as the S. W. & P. and the B. F. & N. W. were scrapping, the Sancho Hills Basin had as good service with burros."
Both Boise and Courtney laughed.