It was all over and the invalid had been carried off by the boisterous Wakefield Damon. Tom Swift stood with Mary and her mother on the porch of their house and watched the two taxicabs, with the travelers and the baggage, disappear toward the railroad station. Mr. Nestor would not hear to any of them following him to the train.
“I hope everything will be all right with him,” sighed Mrs. Nestor.
“Well, everything will be all right with us here!” cried Mary, smiling at Tom. “We have Tom to look out for us.”
“Ah, Tom is such a help,” agreed the anxious woman. “But I hope Dr. Raddiker was right. It is a long way to Iceland, and the cold sea voyage may do him more harm than good.”
CHAPTER IX
THE KEEL IS LAID
“You have convinced yourself that this amount will finance the great scheme, have you, Tom?” asked Ned Newton, leaning back in his chair in the private office of the Swift Construction Company at Shopton. “We can’t be too particular about the financial end of it.”
“All right, Old Cerberus,” laughed Tom Swift, who called his friend everything from the “Watchdog of the Treasury” to “Tightwad, the Penny Squeezer.” “I’ve told you how far I have gone. I have O.K.’d several contracts for parts of the Winged Arrow——”
“Is that going to be the name of the boat?”
“I think so. We have to call her something. I am going to lay her keel—the keel of her boat-cabin—within the fortnight, if circumstances permit. If I don’t fall down on it, Ned, she is going to be a worthy craft!”