Richard Galbraith nodded.
"That's my calling," he assented. "And since it is, I am in a position to handle things that have to do with boats of all kinds. That is why your motor-boat idea has interested me so deeply. I saw its possibilities from the moment I first laid eyes on it, and I wish to congratulate you on having given the public such a useful invention."
"It ain't got far toward the public," objected Willie, with a deprecating shrug of his shoulders.
"But it is going to," Mr. Galbraith declared with promptness. "Bob, Mr. Snelling and I have taken matters into our own hands and have ventured to have an application for a patent prepared—description, claims and all; and after you have sworn to the affidavit and affixed your signature, we will send it off to Washington, where I haven't a doubt it will be granted. I thought this would save you the bother of attending to it yourself."
Poor Willie was too amazed to speak.
"Now Galbraith and Company will want the monopoly of that patent, Mr. Spence," hurried on the financier. "We are going to make you a proposition either for the purchase of it outright, or for its use on a royalty basis."
With a supreme disregard for business, Willie wheeled on him before he could go further and said simply:
"Law, Mr. Galbraith, you can use the thing an' welcome. Turn out as many of 'em as you like. It won't make no odds to me. But the patent—think of havin' a real patent on somethin' I've thought out! Just you picture it!"
He repeated the words in a soft, musing voice that hushed his hearers into stillness.
"I never thought to live to see the day anything of mine would be patented. That means that nobody else anywhere in the world ever was kitched by that same idee before, don't it? It's sorter—sorter wonderful an' gratifyin'. But if it hadn't been for the rest of you that's helped me, the claptraption would never have been in any kind of shape. 'Twould 'a' been just a hit-or-miss contrivance like the rest of the idees I've got indoors. You see, I never had the schoolin' to manage my notions, even when once I'd got 'em. I know that well enough. So if I should get a patent on this thing, 'twould be mostly due to you that's helped me, an' I thank you most humble." His voice trembled with feeling. "After all you've done—the three of you—you wouldn't expect me to take money from you for usin' the scheme, would you? Take it an' welcome, an' may it bring luck to your business! But there's one thing I would like," he added timidly. "If we should get them patent papers from the government an' they ain't no particular use to you, I'd like to keep 'em by me to read over now an' again. 'Twould sorter make it all seem more real some way, an' less as if I'd dreamed it. I've imagined this happenin' so many times an' woke up to find 'twas only imaginin's."