“Well, let me tow you down with my motor?”
“Nope,” said Walter. “I’ll tow her myself.”
In a few minutes more the little “cat” was heading down the Lake with the new yacht in tow.
“What’s the matter?” someone asked Fagner. “You look as if you’d lost something.”
“Oh, no,” laughed Fagner. “I’ve only just been ‘called’ with four mixed diamonds and one black card.”
“Didn’t you want to sell to the boy?” asked one of his workmen, a good old fellow to whom one could be confidential.
“What!” cried Fagner. “Want to sell that?” He pointed to the beautiful fragile craft which a moment or two before had been his. It was following the “cat” as if it had no weight at all. “Absolutely not! That little beauty is the fastest sailing boat in America. Do you see the way she glides? That boat slips over the water like a skimming stone. But she’ll have to be skippered,” he smiled grimly. “After he loses a few races I’ll buy her back. I agreed to sell him either boat, provided he would skipper it himself, and provided also that he would give me an option on a resell. I think I’m safe—although I feel just now like a kid that has had his candy snatched out of his hand.”
Jerry, in the meantime, was busy with the documents piled up on the library table. There had been order about them once, but it took time to discover which were out of date and which still operative. Careful memoranda on slips of cardboard were helpful here and there, but it would require reading packets of correspondence before all the matters could be cleared up; and George Alexander would have to be interviewed. George Alexander had had complete charge of the house and farm end of things during the trip abroad.
This left Richard to his own devices. For a time he made quick friends with “Count”—pointers are not very discriminating. Then with the dog “heeling” beautifully, he marched down the hill to take a swim. Phœbe Norris was sewing on her water-front porch.
“I came down for a swim if I——”