“I’ve been up to New York for some precious chemicals I required, and I was nearly ten days absent. Since I returned I’ve been almost too busy to take time to eat or sleep, and I have not seen or heard of any young man,” he declared.
The sleek Bennett soon made him acquainted with the facts as he knew them himself.
“The fellow’s from the city, somewhere away off, good-looking and dandyfied, an artist, he claims to be. He’s boarding down to Widow Gray’s, and showed himself first at a picnic, where he came with her and got introduced to the whole country-side. I’m not saying he isn’t as pleasant a young chap as I ever met, but I don’t like it, seeing him in and out at Wheatlands all the time without knowing for sure who he’s after, Hermann,” he concluded, uneasily.
“I’ll look into the matter this very day and find out what’s in the wind,” was the reassuring reply.
Bennett’s little ferret eyes looked sharply at him, and he muttered:
“I won’t have any fooling over this here bargain. The mortgage falls due pretty soon now, and if you fail to keep your word, I’ll foreclose at once, I swear.”
“I’ll keep it to the letter: don’t you be uneasy,” soothed Wizard Hermann, adding:
“Have you done anything to help along your own cause, eh?”
“I’ve called several times and fetched the geerls presents of fruit and candy, and took ’em riding in my fine new turnout, but that dad-blame dandy was always along, and I couldn’t hardly get in a word edgeways to the geerl, and Miss Tuttle, she done all the talking to me, so’s I hadn’t any show at all with Leola,” Bennett muttered, morosely.
“Let’s see; suppose you write a letter and propose formally for her hand. Tell her how rich you are, and that you’ll give her anything her heart craves. If she refuses, then I shall have to use my influence,” Wizard Hermann said, consolingly, wishing he were well out of all this bother and back in his laboratory at work with his beloved chemicals.