“What a duck of a room!” cried Grace.
“Isn’t it?” agreed Corene.
They were surveying a very quaintly arranged room, indeed. The low beamed ceilings were of natural rough cedar, the field-stone fireplace stood out like a primitive shrine, and on the floors were the most wonderful Indian rugs.
“We brought those rugs from the West,” Peg explained, noting the girls’ admiration. “But I want to show you—my studio.”
She unlocked a door and ushered the visitors into a very long darkened room. When all were within, she swung the door back, shot a bolt and switched on lights.
“Oh, a shop!” exclaimed Isabel.
“That’s just what it is,” answered Peg. “This was dad’s shop and I have been tinkering here since he left it to me. I miss him dreadfully, for dad and I were great pals,” she said bravely.
“And this is the machinery you have been guarding?” said Louise, just daring to put one finger on a long piece of steel that did not go off following the contact.
“Yes,” said Peg. “You see, even now I would not leave that door unlocked, and we have never kept a servant since dad started this invention. It is a machine for drilling rock; it will pick up certain kinds of minerals and is most valuable because it can be worked without steam power. Dad had not quite finished it, but he was positive of its value, and a single look at the simple mechanism, he warned me, would easily betray its principle to any skilled mechanic. That is why the windows are boarded. See,” she went to a window and raised a shade, “I can get light from those slanted boards,” she explained, “but no one could possibly see into this room. We have a tank that makes our own gas. Daddy was very ingenious,” she finished, coming back to the machine from which she had taken a heavy blanket covering.
The Scouts looked about, bewildered. What could a girl do, really, with iron and steel, and leather belts!