"Is that what you're going to do next—invent a flying-machine?" laughed Matt.
"Either that or build an automobile."
"Build an automobile," suggested Susie; "you won't have so far to fall if anything gives out."
Just then Chub thought of something he wanted to say to the Bluebell and jumped for the key. Matt talked with Susie for a little while, but kept quiet about his expected meeting with Clipperton. When he left, he proceeded the length of the front walk and passed through the gate, in order to give Susie, who was watching him, the impression that he was going back to town. He could turn back along the canal just below the bridge, and so come to the place where Clipperton would be waiting for him. On his way to the canal he most unexpectedly ran into Welcome Perkins, who was burning the air in the direction of home.
"Whoop!" cried Welcome fiercely, "it's a wonder ye wouldn't look where ye're goin'—runnin' inter a one-legged ole pirate like a cyclone. Where's yer eyes, anyway? Think I ain't got nothin' else to do but—— Shade o' Gallopin' Dick! Why, if it ain't Matt King—jest the very feller I wanted to see. There's the horriblest thing a-goin' on, pard, ye most ever heard of! I got so heathen mad I come purty nigh fallin' from grace, drorin' ole Lucretia Borgia an' damagin' every one in sight. Nobody knows what a rip-roarin' ole fury I am when I cut loose, or——"
"What's on your mind, Welcome?" said Matt, trying to pin the old man down to more facts and less language.
"That's what I'm a-tellin' ye," fluttered Welcome. "Rushed around to Mrs. Spooner's—fine ole lady, Mrs. Spooner, but she's scart of me. Soon's she saw who it was a-rappin' on the door she screams frightful, an' wouldn't talk with me till I'd got off the porch." Welcome sniffed plaintively. "That's what a blood-curdlin' past'll do fer a man. Don't you never turn into a hootin', tootin' road-agent, Matt, or——"
"I'll turn into something worse than that," broke in Matt, "if you don't tell me what you're trying to. Now, then, make another start."
"Mrs. Spooner she says you ain't there, an' I reckons ye've gone to see Chub," went on Welcome, "so off I comes this way. Whisper," he sputtered in Matt's ear, excitedly, and drew him close to the fence at the roadside. "This is so tur'ble it won't bear tellin' above yer breath."