"Sure," Ted grinned, "I'll be famous as a deer hunter before I ever am as a resort owner."
Finally satisfied with his stretching board, Al laid it carefully in a corner. He took a blackened pipe from his shirt pocket and an exquisitely wrought tobacco pouch from his trousers. Made of home-tanned buckskin, even if the pouch had not borne the stamp of Al's craftsmanship, it would have been recognized as his. His name, A. HARKNESS, was stencilled on it. Al filled his pipe, lighted it and puffed lazy bursts of blue smoke into the air.
Tammie, who, in common with most dogs, disliked the smell of tobacco, sneezed and moved farther away. For a moment Al did not speak. Finally he murmured, "So now you're goin' to be a famous resort owner?"
"Why, didn't you know?" Ted asked gaily. "The Mahela Lodge will be known all the way from Lorton to Danzer."
Al grinned faintly. "That's a real long ways, nigh onto six miles. You wouldn't change your mind?"
"About what?"
"You can still go to college this fall and learn to be a dentist, lawyer, or anything else you want."
"Colleges cost money."
"I have," Al said tartly, "been scarin' up a penny every now and again since I been changin' your didies. I can still scare up enough to send you through college, but I mistrust about startin' you in the resort business. Crestwood cost Carl Thornton more money than I've earned in my whole life."
"I don't want to leave the Mahela."