“If so, Nicholas, be sure that Time will right it.”
“It will mean an extra eight-eighty on my pay check, anyhow,” said the youngest reporter.
“Didn’t I tell you, Nicholas?” asked Doctor Trigg.
“You tell me so much!” exploded Doctor Sims wrathfully.
When everyone woke up to their second Monday, there was a feeling that something out of the ordinary ought to happen to celebrate it. But the extra day went serenely on its way, with what Doctor Sims called “an ostentatious lack of incident.”
Whenever they were at liberty David and Red pored over the plans of David’s invention, and talked about it with technical abandon. David did not undervalue Red’s help, and it depressed his just and generous heart to think that they could not benefit together on the invention, but to secure the patent, manufacture and put it on the market would take more thousands of dollars than both boys would possess in the next twenty years.
David was faced by the conditions that discourage effort in so many young inventors. Usually their sessions were broken up by Red’s furious demand of fate to know why the barren farm in Oklahoma, only twenty miles from Wally’s gushers, remained stubbornly dry. Twice had the Ryans, pooling their meager resources, drilled down, never even reaching sand.
David did not wish to mention his invention to Mr. Hammond until he had put it up for the prize at the Goodlow School. He did not know that Dulcie had spoken to her father about it. However, Mr. Hammond respected his reticence, and asked no questions.
Late on that queer second Monday, Red met Dulcie in the control room.
“I hear you have bespoken a new chauffeur, Miss Hammond,” he said quizzically. “I wonder you didn’t offer me the job.”