"Grandpa," proceeded Preciosa, "I want him to come here again and throw some more sheets over the furniture. He's awfully smart, and he's just bursting with ideas."
Her grandfather scratched his chin. There were so many smart young men bursting with ideas—the wrong sort of ideas. "Let him go to Mr. Hill."
"They're better than those others were."
Still the old man shook his head. "Let him go to Mr. Hill," he repeated.
"With a letter or something from you?"
"Let him go and talk for himself."
"No. You just sit down and write it now." Then, to herself: "There! I think Virgilia Jeffreys will find she can't wind me round her finger quite as easily as she thought she could!"
Preciosa gave Prochnow his letter in front of the Parthenon pediment (where the current of visitors was thinnest), and counselled him to advance on the Grindstone. He was as quick and clever as any of them, she declared, and was entitled to take his share.
Prochnow tossed his head. "I don't know that I care for a 'share,'" he said.
"Do you want to do it all?" asked Preciosa, awe-struck.