About seven o’clock, Attorney Stockwell, who had been reading the local paper on the front porch, stuck his head into the kitchen and asked if supper would soon be ready.
“I kind o’ been waitin’ thinkin’ maybe Bud’d come home this evening,” was Mrs. Stockwell’s answer.
“You don’t need to count on him, I reckon,” answered her husband. “He probably won’t think much about home long as that airship is on his mind.”
“It’s funny to me,” added Mrs. Stockwell, stirring the potatoes, “that he wouldn’t take no pay. Goodness knows he could use it. The boy ain’t got hardly a whole shirt to his back.”
“He’ll have to be doin’ something soon,” said the attorney. “I can’t keep him here for nothin’ all his life. An’ he’s nearly grown now.”
His wife sighed:
“He’s been a purty good boy at that. An’ he’s been quite a help to me. I dunno how I’d get along without him.”
“Well, you better not wait for him. He’s gettin’ altogether too smart. If he’s too proud to take the money he earned, I ain’t. President Elder gave it to me to hold for him, in trust, but I guess Bud owes me a good deal more’n that.”
The Stockwells ate their supper without Bud, although there was enough talk about him. That evening the lawyer made inquiries in the boy’s usual haunts, but no one had seen him since the aeroplane landed. So the evening passed until nine o’clock, at which hour Attorney Stockwell was summoned by telephone to come at once to Mr. Elder’s private office in the First National Bank. Here he found a hastily called conference of fair directors. The president was there with Judge Pennington and Mr. Waldron, a country member.