"The money? Aye, there's no denying it would be a help. However, with what you and Bob and I are going to earn this summer we should make out very well, even if your Uncle Mark Miller has left us in the lurch and your Uncle Henry King's investments have gone bad on us. I'll be turning a tidy penny with my boarders, thanks to you. And for a lad your age ten dollars a week is not to be sneezed at. Why, we'll have quite a little fortune between us!"
He saw her face brighten.
"Now if Bob could only be near at hand like you I believe I should be entirely happy," she sighed. "I hate to think of him way out there on that spit of sand with the sea booming all around him and nothing for company but the other fellow, who's asleep whenever he's awake, and that clicking wireless instrument. Imagine the loneliness of it! The solitude would drive me crazy inside a week—I know it would."
"Bob doesn't mind."
"He's not the lad to say so if he did," replied the mother grimly. "Nobody'd be any the wiser for what Bob thinks. Often at night I fall to wondering what he'd do was he to be taken sick."
"Oh, he'd be all right, Mother," answered His Highness cheerfully. "O'Connel is there, you know."
"And what kind of a nurse would he be, do you think, with his ear to that switchboard from daylight until dark?"
"Not quite that. Mother."
"Well, almost that, anyhow. It is all well enough for you to say so jauntily that Bob doesn't mind being off there with the wind howling round him and nothing to do but listen to it."
"Nothing to do!" repeated Walter. "Why, Ma, he's busy all the time."