“Grand place you have here, Simmons,” Dr. Vessinger observed. “The top of a hill not too high,—that’s the right place for a country house.”
“If Olaf were only here oftener,” the wife remarked. “He’s just come home, and he says he must leave soon again.”
“Yes, those Jews I work for, the Techheimer Brothers, mean that I shall earn my salary. They are dickering for some new mines in Mexico, and want me to look them over.”
“But you are promised to me for the tenth,” Mrs. Bellflower protested.
“What are the Techheimers to that?” commented the doctor.
“Nothing! I shall put them off until the eleventh,” Simmons responded heartily. “It’s going to be a fierce jaunt, and I am not keen to start.”
“Take us! We would all go, wouldn’t we, Mrs. Simmons?” the younger woman put in.
“I am afraid the hotels wouldn’t please you down there. And queer things happen sometimes. The last time I was there—it was ticklish. I never wanted to go back. You wouldn’t have liked it, not you women.”
“Tell it! Tell us!” they chorused. Vessinger lit a cigarette and resigned himself to watching the assembling clouds. Imperceptibly he drew away from the group, as if declining to be one where he was not first.
“I adore adventures!” the Magnificent Wreck added sentimentally, encouragingly. Simmons folded his arms across his breast. His eyes flashed pleasantly. The story interested him, too:—