Stack looked at her through the sand-squall which he was raising; this was the second time that he had seen her and on both occasions her clothing looked as if she had been dragged through a river, but he decided that if she were ever dry she’d be pretty, and if, after he entered Tech, he was duly elected to his chosen fraternity, she should be his guest during Frat week when the freshmen entertained their friends.
Here he came out of fairy-land, fortune-land, for a moment, to hear the distant, strong chug, chug of a motor-boat upon the river above the Neck.
“If I get rich out of this, I’m going to have a motorcycle,” burst forth Kenjo, that distant chug shaping his dream.
“Rond! Rond! Rond!”
chanted Toiney; he did not open his heart like the young people, but as he incessantly clawed and dug, he had dreams, pathetic in their grandeur, about swaggering back to a rural spot near Quebec, where his old mother still clattered round in wooden shoes, as one who had made “beeg fortune on United State’.”
Never before were such silvery air-castles constructed out of so little metal as that contained in one tarnished coin—a coin of a goodly size, however, larger than a fifty-cent piece, almost as big as an American dollar.
Suddenly through the glittering halls of those castles in the air resounded an earthly shout that, momentarily, shattered them; it was accompanied by a swish of oars; the chug, chug of the power-boat had ceased.
“Ahoy there! For heaven’s sake! have you all turned into a passel of hens?” It was Captain Andy’s amazed shout as he landed from his rowboat on a point of the sands which experience had taught him to be safe. “I’m after one hen, to take her back with me!” pointing to the scratching Jessica. “A nice scare she’s given us all—I found the dory bobbing up the river. An’ by gracious! my heart’s been in my mouth since. What in thunder are you diggin’ like that for? Mad as March hares, all of you!”
“Humph! Perhaps we’re not so crazy as you think. Look at that!” With a lordly air Stack drew out the coin and held it forth in its silver beauty, stained and worn by long burial, for the captain to see, as he drew near. “What d’you think of our madness now?” He gulped and gasped.
“Why! Why! It’s one of those old sun-dollars!” Captain Andy, receiving it upon his own palm and turning it over (Stack was not afraid to trust it to him), looked pleased, highly pleased, and interested, but not wildly carried away as befitted one who held the first-fruit of a fortune in his hand.