"What a young wheedler you are!" observed he, playfully rumpling up his son's fair hair. "You could coax every cent I have away from me if I did not lock my money up in the bank. I really think, though, that a telephone here in the hut would be an excellent idea. But what I don't see is why you don't do the job yourselves."
"Oh, we could do the work all right if there wasn't danger of our infringing the patent of the telephone company," was Laurie's impish reply. "If we should get into a lawsuit there would be no end of trouble, you know. I guess we'd much better have the thing installed in the regular way."
"I guess so too!" came from his father.
"You'll really have it put in, Dad?" cried Laurie.
"Sure!"
"That will be bully, corking!" Laurie declared. "You're mighty good, Dad."
"Pooh! Nonsense!" his father protested, as he shot a quick glance of tenderness toward the boy. "A telephone over here will be a useful thing for us all. I may want to call Ted up myself sometimes. We never can tell when an emergency may arise."
Within the following week the telephone was in place and although Ted had not minded his seclusion, or thought he had not, he suddenly found that the instrument gave him a very comfortable sense of nearness to his family and to the household at Pine Lea. He and Laurie chattered like magpies over the wire and were far worse, Mrs. Fernald asserted, than any two gossipy boarding-school girls. Moreover, Ted was now able to speak each day with his father at the Fernald shipping rooms and by this means keep in closer touch with his family. As for Mr. Wharton, he marvelled that a telephone to the shack had not been put in at the outset.
"It is not a luxury," he insisted. "It's a necessity! An indispensable part of the farm equipment!"
Certainly in the days to come it proved its worth!