"I wired my man to meet us. Ah, there he is!" he exclaimed, as they reached the drifted pavement, and he expanded his chest with complacency.
Peter with difficulty brought the horses to the curb and Simon, after Rachel had taken her place in the carriage, climbed in himself. Then he thrust his head through the door and ordered the man to drive home, but Rachel plucked his sleeve.
"No, no," she coaxed, "tell him to drive to the shop first."
Simon, though he altered the direction, when he settled himself at her side, looked at her with a slightly mocking expression.
"I want to get that fiddle from Mr. Mudge," she explained. "In his last letter he said he'd found one and I want Nora to take it to André when she goes. She's starting for Old Harbour at once and will call for the fiddle as soon as I let her know we're here. Then, too," with a side glance, "I'm anxious, if you must know, to learn from Mr. Mudge how that heat-measurer turned out."
"That is, you wish to learn whether he has heard anything from your enterprising inventor?"
"Well yes," she admitted; and they both laughed.
A few days before their marriage, Simon had chanced to remark that an instrument for measuring heat in the furnace in which metals were melted would be an important acquisition to the manufacturing jeweller. Thereupon Rachel had begged him to submit the problem to Emil St. Ives. To please her he had carried out her wish. Bearing a note from her to the inventor (a note in which she incidentally announced her matrimonial plans) Simon had sought out Emil whom he located readily through the lithographing firm of Just and Lawless. Emil without hesitation had promised the instrument within a week. Now three months had elapsed without a word from him and at any mention of the subject, Simon was wont to adopt a tone of raillery.
"Better give up your expectations along that line, my dear," he advised now; "that instrument will never materialize; St. Ives, judging by his look, is no more to be depended upon than the wild man from Borneo. Besides, if we stop at the shop, we'll miss the overture of the opera, and in Faust the overture is a consideration. Can't you restrain your eagerness until morning?"
But Rachel was not to be swayed: "Tell the man to drive faster."