"Help!" said Father. "Let's get down to business on this proposition before we get to the other one."
And we all laughed, for it was funny to see the Idol with patches on his trousers and hardly a day's living ahead, pass right over the fifty thousand dollars, with more in the contract, and all the sensation it had made, to begin to explain about what was out in the shed now. He looked pained at our interruption and tried to begin again, but Father interrupted him.
"Well, have you told this one to these 'bubbles,' as my young friend Luttrell so appropriately calls them? By the way, the economical Rogers had on the coat that Dr. Byrd had doctored for the cholera, which I had asked him to destroy for me, and the Scout Leader was right in his nose clue. I suppose that was what led him to suspect me and shadow Rogers to the telegraph office. Great boy, that Luttrell! But to return to the girls: If you have told Phyllis, I shall have to keep her in solitary confinement until it is finished. Miss Roxanne, I know, can be trusted at large."
I knew Father was just joking, by the eyelid and the corner of his mouth, but the Idol drew himself up according to the old portrait again before he spoke.
"Mr. Forsythe" he said, "I haven't any secret that Phyllis can't know. If she accidentally gave this one away to Rogers—she can the next, and the next." He took my hand again and drew me close to him. To think that that wonderful Idol should feel like that about insignificant me!
And father looked as impressed as he ought to have been, and begged my pardon in the proper manner; only I saw the bat in his eyes that showed how amused he was.
"Well," he said slowly, "Phyllis is a dangerous person to tell secrets to, or even to live an ordinary life before. Her penetration is so keen that she sees a man in his true character—and gets a thousand dollars from him for her estimate of his personality. I am glad to buy the opinion of me that you sent your cousin Gilmore at a thousand dollars, Phyllis,—it is worth more than that to me—from you!" His eyes were very tender to me though then, laughing: "Want to see yourself as she sees you in this thousand-dollar book I'm going to have printed, Byrd?" he asked teasingly.
"Oh, no!" I gasped; "I hoped he would never see that! Don't give him one, if you bought it. Don't even talk about it!" Let's go telegraph the doctor—we have forgotten the eyes too long now."
"That will not be necessary," said Father, with the lovely look that comes into his face when Lovelace Peyton is even mentioned. "When I read your letter to Gilmore, I hunted around immediately and brought the best man in New York with me to see to those eyes. He is over at the house getting rested and ready, and will have to make his examination in less than an hour now, so you two had better hustle to get Dr. Byrd ready for him. Everything must be antiseptic."
Antiseptic, with those fishing worms and the hen and the pet toad and the June bugs in his bed! Roxanne fled, calling Uncle Pompey on her way.