Scheffer's dark face brightened; he would share with Paul his pleasant dream—the pleasant dream he cherished, though his sober sense denied its possibility, and his consistent realism charged upon him the special folly of fools.
'Aye,' said he; 'there'll be a library in it—but more select than that of the Atheneum you were wishing for! You shall have the freedom of my house, lad—I'll not forget how kind you've been to me. I shall have a flower garden, and a yard deep enough for shade trees like those—but you don't remember the place.'
Scheffer got up and walked away to the window.
'I've not the slightest doubt that you'll do everything you say! I vow I wouldn't like to be the man to stand in your way to anything.'
Scheffer came back, and sat on the sofa beside Paul. His voice had an almost fatherly tenderness in it when he began to speak, and it took no colder tone.
'You were saying something about an improvement you could suggest in some of the tools we use. Here they are. What did you mean?' He pulled out a box from underneath the sofa.
Paul took the box, and looked over its contents; but it was easy to see that he was in search of nothing. He was soon through his investigation, and restored the box to its place. Then he looked at Scheffer, and laughed.
But Scheffer answered the look by one that seemed to say that he expected an explanation; whereupon Paul, now grave enough, stirred by a sudden confidence, pulled from his pocket a box much smaller than that which held August's tools, and passed it into his friend's hands. Scheffer took it, but he did not attempt to loosen the cord that secured the cover. Then Paul said:
'You do not really suppose that I am the only idle person in the world. I have been at work longer than Josephine, though you might not believe it; but what I have done, no one has yet seen. If I had the money, Scheffer! I'd—well—look at the thing! I want you should study it, of course.'
August, however, was in no haste. He was more desirous to learn the meaning of what Paul had said about Josephine. But that could not be asked by him; and so he unfastened the cord, opened the box, and beheld within a miniature machine, whose meaning no one in the world, Paul Mitchell excepted, could explain. That was Paul's thought of pride.