“Well, Barzilla,” asked Captain Sol, “what's the newest craze over to the hotel?”
“The newest,” said Wingate, with a grin, “is automobiles.”
“Automobiles? Why, I thought 'twas baseball.”
“Baseball was last summer. We had a championship team then. Yes, sir, we won out, though for a spell it looked pretty dubious. But baseball's an old story. We've had football since, and now—”
“Wait a minute! Football? Why, now I do remember. You had a football team there and—and wa'n't there somethin' queer, some sort of a—a robbery, or stealin', or swindlin' connected with it? Seems's if I'd heard somethin' like that.”
Mr. Wingate looked his friend over, winked, and asked a question.
“Sol,” he said, “you ain't forgot how to keep a secret?”
The depot master smiled. “I guess not,” he said.
“Well, then, I'm goin' to trust you with one. I'm goin' to tell you the whole business about that robbin'. It's all mixed up with football and millionaires and things—and it's a dead secret, the truth of it. So when I tell you it mustn't go no further.
“You see,” he went on, “it was late into August when Peter T. was took down with the inspiration. Not that there was anything 'specially new in his bein' took. He was subject to them seizures, Peter was, and every time they broke out in a fresh place. The Old Home House itself was one of his inspirations, so was the hirin' of college waiters, the openin' of the two 'Annex' cottages, the South Shore Weather Bureau, and a whole lot more. Sometimes, as in the weather-bureau foolishness, the disease left him and t'other two patients—meanin' me and Cap'n Jonadab—pretty weak in the courage, and wasted in the pocketbook; but gen'rally they turned out good, and our systems and bank accounts was more healthy than normal. One of Peter T.'s inspirations was consider'ble like typhoid fever—if you did get over it, you felt better for havin' had it.