The stenographer knocked to announce Mr. Pickett.
“Say to him,” replied John, indifferently, “that we are in conference but he can see us in just a moment.”
“Pickett!” exclaimed Ward, senior, as the door closed. “What on earth brings him here!”
“The Campbells are coming,” replied John with a grin. “Pickett’s president of the Water Power Company, and he wants to line us up to get Campbell interested in making a new bond deal.”
“Humph! If that’s what he wants I like his nerve. We don’t even speak when we meet.”
“You’ll be speaking now! Let’s go out and give him the glad hand of brotherly greeting.”
A little diffident at first, Wesley T. Pickett warmed under the spell of the Wards’ magnanimity.
“I’ve regretted very much our little differences——” he began.
“There’s no feeling on our side at all, Mr. Pickett,” John declared and his father, a little dazed, murmured his acquiescence in this view of the matter, and eyed with interest a formidable bundle of documents in Pickett’s hands.
“Fact is,” remarked Pickett, with a sheepish grin as he re-crossed his legs, “you were dead right on that matter of the pollution of the river. Swiggert probably did the best he could with our defense but you were right when you told me I’d save money and avoid arousing hostile feeling in the community by pleading guilty.”