Mills murmured a denial and took a cigarette from the box Bruce extended.
“How much money is there to spend on this? I was just thinking that that’s an important point. Public work of this sort is often spoiled by lack of funds.”
“Three hundred thousand is the limit. Mr. Freeman warns me that it’s hardly enough for what I propose, and that I’ve got to do some trimming.”
He drew from a drawer the terms of the competition and the specifications, and smoked in silence while Mills looked them over.
“It’s all clear enough. It’s a joint affair—the county does half and the rest is a popular subscription?”
“Yes; the local committee are fine people; too bad they haven’t enough to do the thing just right,” Bruce replied. “Of course I mean the way I’d like to do it—with your idea of the fountain that I’d rejoice to steal!”
“That’s a joke—that I could offer a trained artist any suggestion of real value!”
Bruce was finding his caller a very different Franklin Mills from the man he had talked with in the Jefferson Avenue house, and not at all the man whom, in his rôle of country squire, he had seen at Deer Trail. Mills was enjoying himself; there was no question of that. He lighted a cigar—the cigar he usually smoked at home before going to bed.
“You will not be known as a competitor; your plans will go in anonymously?” he inquired.
“Yes; that’s stipulated,” Bruce replied.