Ella blushed and laughed and said he was a goose; but he kept on looking.
He wouldn't tell her much, though. "Don't, dear," he said when she urged for information. "It's too serious. If I should fail—"
"You won't fail!" she protested. "You can't fail! And if you do—why—as I told you before, I like to camp out!"
But when he tried to take some natural advantage of her friendliness she teased him—said he was growing to look just like his father! Which made them both laugh.
Arnold returned and settled down to business. He purchased stores of pasteboard, of paper, of printers ink, and a little machine to fold cartons. Thus equipped he retired to his fastness, and set dark-eyed Caterlina to work in a little box factory of his own; while clever Guiseppe ran the printing press, and Mafalda pasted. Cartons, piled flat, do not take up much room, even in thousands.
Then Arnold loafed deliberately.
"Why not your Mr. Blake work no more?" inquired Mrs. Patsy of her spouse.
"O he work—he work hard," replied Patsy. "You women—you not understand work!"
Mrs. Patsy tossed her head and answered in fluent Italian, so that her husband presently preferred out of doors occupation; but in truth Arnold Blake did not seem to do much that summer. He loafed under his great trees, regarding them lovingly; he loafed by his lonely upper waterfall, with happy dreaming eyes; he loafed in his little blue lake—floating face to the sky, care free and happy as a child. And if he scribbled a great deal—at any sudden moment when the fit seized him, why that was only his weakness as a poet.
Toward the end of September, he invited an old college friend up to see him; now a newspaper man—in the advertising department. These two seemed to have merry times together. They fished and walked and climbed, they talked much; and at night were heard roaring with laughter by their hickory fire.