When the long dinner hour was over, Papa Wolf lighted his meerschaum. "And now let's look at that engine again. You should come and see it, Mamma. Run by sunshine and almost as silent as the sun and powerful like it. Wonderful! Wonderful!"
"You've hardly looked at the alfalfa, Papa," said Ernest.
"Plenty of time for that. One thing at a time. Come along, Dean. If you should explain that engine through to me two or three times more, I'll understand it. Ernest and Roger, they never thought to take old Papa to see the working model at the University. They thought because I was a fool about the working drawings, I knew nothing. Come on, Dean! Come along."
Seated on two up-ended boxes before the engine, the two gray headed men spent the afternoon. The Dean could have been enticed away to examine the alfalfa and the pumping system. But not Papa. He went out at intervals to look at the absorber and to read the thermometer at the oil storage pit, then back to the engine.
"And this is what Ernie has been working on for all these years. And I never could get it through my old head."
"Ernest and Roger too," the Dean would suggest.
"Of course, Roger. But you know Ernest and his fine mind. Observe now, Dean, out there the parching, cruel sun, that strikes and kills. Here Ernest's magic, this silent machine that catches that sun and turns its death kiss into life. And out there, where the honey bees buzz, the magic made vital. My boy's brain did such miracles and I never knew it until now. I even forbade him the house when he insisted on giving birth to his idea."
The others drifted in and out and at last the supper hour came and once more the clan gathered at the familiar table.
"Why, Papa, I haven't seen you with such appetite or with such spirits since last Christmas," said Mamma.
"You haven't seen me with such cause. And how mad I was when I came—eh, Mamma!"