“I can’t make promises,” replied Tom.
“Not if I pay you a handsome sum down for your promise to wait three days before you commit yourself to any one else?” asked Mr. Blythe, drawing out his checkbook from his pocket. “That doesn’t put you under any obligation to accept our offer. You can refuse that offer if you like. It simply gives us three days’ time to get in a bid.”
“Put up your checkbook, Mr. Blythe,” replied Tom, with a friendly smile. “I don’t want to be bound in any way. You’ve got the telegraph and the long distance telephone at your disposal, and you can communicate with your New York office. When I have your actual offer in my hand, if your people choose to make one, I promise to give it fair and careful consideration. Further than that I can’t go.”
Baffled for the moment, Mr. Blythe bade Tom a hasty farewell, jumped into his car, and put off toward Copperhead at a speed that threatened to break the laws. Tom looked after him with a smile, and then turned to matters that claimed his immediate attention.
Ned and Mr. Damon were interested and amused when Tom told them that night of his interview with Mr. Blythe.
“Bless my prophetic powers!” cried Mr. Damon. “I told you they’d all be crazy to get hold of it.”
“Let them worry,” said Ned, with a grin. “It will be good for their souls.”
Later Tom gave them a bit of news.
“I’m expecting Rad down here to-morrow or next day,” he remarked. “It looks as though we’d be in this part of the country for quite a time now, and I thought I might as well let him come along. In the last letter I had from Dad, he said that Rad seemed miserable and didn’t know what to do with himself. Said he was making a nuisance of himself about the house. So I wrote and told him to send him down.”
Sure enough, the following day the old negro arrived at the farm. Tom had looked for him by a later train, and so there was no one to meet Rad and he had walked the four miles from the station. He was overjoyed at seeing Tom, and showed every tooth in a glistening smile as his young master met him at the gate.