“Things come round so queerly in this world!” remarked Dave by way of preliminary to his news. “That fellow Carruthers—the one who gave me away to the college authorities—has turned up. It seems Estelle and—and Miss Yorke, know his sister and have met him at her studio. I suppose I am indebted to that fact for his interest in my affairs. At all events he shows a disposition to make amends. He doesn’t seem to be quite so much of a cad as I thought. And by a strange chance he seems to have some influence over an old Crœsus to whom I sent a design for a yacht. He had advertised for one. I happened to see the paper. Seeing what clumsy old-fashioned models we followed in building ships, had made me look into those things and I thought I knew just how a yacht ought to be built. I’ve had something to do with yachts on the river, you know, and I have been drawing that kind of thing all my life.
“It was a pretty good design—if I do say it.” He wagged his head with boyish satisfaction. “But of course Mr. Salter received a great many and I think Carruthers really did hurry him up on mine. Perhaps he may have shown him how good it was, too. Carruthers knows a thing or two about yachts, it seems. He is going to have one himself, now that he has come into a lot of money. I don’t believe he would have been such a sneak up there at the college if he hadn’t lost his temper thinking we were a lot of hypocrites.”
“I am so glad, Dave,” I said, “and yet I wish—I can’t help wishing that you had developed a capacity for business.” I did not mean to be a damper on his delight, but in a sudden reaction of feeling the trouble that was on its way seemed unendurable. “I can’t bear that the old shipyard and everything that was so dear to grandpa’s heart should be lost to us forever!”
Dave flushed in the sensitive way he had which seemed so incongruous with his giant-like physique.
“Perhaps—perhaps I shall be able to save the day,” he said.
But I will admit that I didn’t see how drawing successful designs for yachts was going to save the shipyard, although Estelle looked as if her faith were equal even to that strain.
Dave went to the city the next morning to see Mr. Salter and Ned Carruthers. He spoke of his whilom foe as if he had quite forgiven him; indeed if there had been no attempt to make amends Dave was incapable of cherishing resentment. Without any question of amiability or a Christian spirit, which I think the dear boy really had, he was easy as we of the Partridge nose were not—though one should “bray us in a mortar,” for it we could not help being hard.
He told Cyrus his business and confided to me, afterward, with real feeling, how kind and sympathetic Cyrus had been.
“Cyrus is no end of a good fellow when you really get at him,” he said. “He tried not to let me see that he didn’t think much of drawing, anyway.”
“Cyrus knows that life is not for play or for doing just what one wants to,” I said sharply.