It was hot outside in the noisy streets, but the Somasco Consolidated offices were quiet and cool when Alton entertained two of his friends there one afternoon. There is no special sanctity attached to a place of business in the West, and nobody who knew Alton would have been astonished to find plates of fruit upon the papers which littered his table, and a spirit lamp burning on the big empty stove. A very winsome young lady also sat in a lounge-chair, and Forel close by glanced at her with a most unbusinesslike twinkle in his eyes. Seaforth had been married recently, and his wife had called in to see, so she told Alton, that he was not working him too hard.
"You will give Mrs. Charley some tea," said Alton. "Your husband, madam, has been brought up well, but there was a time when I had real trouble in teaching him. Forel, you'll find some ice and soda yonder as well as the other things."
Nellie Seaforth laughed a little as she thrust the cup away. "No," she said; "I know where that tea comes from, and I would sooner have some ice and soda with out the other things. Have the strawberries gone up, Harry?"
Alton nodded. "That's a fact, and I am very glad," he said. "You see, we are sending out about a ton of them every day, and there are none to equal ours in the Dominion. Still, if Charley wasn't so lazy he'd give you some. Can't you find that ice, Forel? There was a big lump yesterday."
"That is quite possible," said Forel dryly, "but it has gone, and it is apparently running out of your plans and estimates now."
"Then you will have to fall back upon Horton's tea," said Alton, smiling. "Nobody knows where he gets it from except that it isn't China, but he seems to think it's my duty to buy it from him, and the rasp of it brings the bush back to me. Makes one smell the cedars, and see the lake flashing, and I'm very tired of the city."
Mrs. Seaforth laughed as she glanced at the bottles Forel was pitching out of a box, for as yet he had not found one with anything in it.
"Have you a mineral water factory at Somasco, too?" she said.
"Not yet," said Alton gravely. "But we may have by and by, though some of my partners would have more use for a distillery. We're going to have everything that will pay, but we've been too busy making roads lately."
Forel stood up, looking a little more thoughtful. "You are, at any rate, running up a confoundedly long bill," he said. "You will get very few new dresses, Mrs. Seaforth, unless you make your husband stop him. Of course you heard nothing, Alton, from the roads and trails?"