"There you are!" she exclaimed, "thinking always of the cost, never of the fun! Of course you would never do any such thing. Let me try again! Suppose you were to hold up a bank messenger in Wall Street and skip with a satchelful of negotiable securities and then, after the papers were through ragging the police for their inefficiency, you would drive up to the bank in a taxi, walk in and return the money, saying you had found it in the old family pew at Trinity when you went in to say your prayers! Here would be an opportunity to break the force of habit and awaken your self-confidence."
"Am I to understand that you practice what you preach? I don't mean to be impertinent, but really,—"
"Oh, I'm perfectly capable of doing anything I've suggested. I'm merely biding my time. Parents are pardonably fussy about the sort of person they turn their children over to, so I must have a care. I mean to dig for buried treasure this summer, realizing the dream of a lifetime."
"That appeals to me strongly. Perhaps you'd let me assist in that undertaking?"
"Impossible! I want all the glory and eke the gold if I find the hidden chests. Talk about romance being dead! My grandfather was a planter in Mississippi before the Civil War. In about 1860 he saw trouble ahead, and as he was opposed to secession he turned everything he had into gold, bought several tracts of land in Michigan and New York and secretly planted his money. His wife and children refused to share his lonely exile and he sent them to England but clung to America himself, and died suddenly and alone the second year of the war on the very acres my father inherited in Michigan. That's where I'm opening my camp."
"And the gold hasn't been found?" asked Archie deeply interested.
"Not a coin so far! You see grandfather made his will in war time and only divided the land, being afraid to mention the buried treasure in a document that would become a public record when he died."
"This is most exciting. It's only unfortunate that it's not pirate gold to give zest to your enterprise."
"Oh, the pirate in the story is a cousin of mine, who inherited the land up near the St. Lawrence and has dug all over it without results. My father gave the Michigan scenery to me, but this cousin has been digging on my land, most unwarrantably! He's rather a dashing young person!"
Archie was so enthralled that he forgot the typewritten dietary he always carried in his pocket and ate most of his portion of beef tenderloin before he remembered that red meats were denied him. He laid down his fork so abruptly that she asked him what was the matter.