"I don't want to go into the automobile accessory business. I have no room for it at all; but I do want to sell gasoline because it is easily handled and earns a good profit. However, I will help you to get a supply of accessories. You go to Boston and find out just what it will cost you. Go and see Alex Cantling of Cantling & Farmer. They're big machinery people, and Alex Cantling is a good friend of mine, and is as shrewd a man as there is in the trade. Ask him how much you would have to buy, and then come back and tell me. If it is a nominal amount to start with, I wouldn't mind guaranteeing the account for you for three months. Now you will have to excuse me, for I am very busy. Come and see me as soon as you get the thing worked out." "When are you going to start the gas?" I asked. "Not before April. By the way," said he, putting his hand on my shoulder, "I must ask you not to say word of this to any one." "But I have already mentioned it to the Mater." "H'm. Well, would you ask her please not to mention it to any one? If, by any chance, she has, I must reserve the right to call off all offers. By the way, I expect my boy, Fred, home in about a month's time." Fred was old Barlow's one and only child. He had been in Detroit, working in a big automobile shop for some time, and I had understood that he was coming back on a visit to Farmdale. The old man and Fred had never got along very well together, and Fred had left because the old man wanted him to work in the store and he positively refused to do so. I didn't know what it all meant, but I had a feeling that Barlow wasn't offering to set me up in the automobile business just out of love for me. He had some other reason for it and I decided to think twice before I definitely accepted. I knew he would give me a square deal, because he was such a white man, but it looked almost too good to be true that he would carry a gas account for me, and then guarantee an automobile accessory account for three months. He had never asked even for a note, or anything, for his own protection. CHAPTER XXXIV DOMINATING IN SERVICE The sun had begun to shine once more. I had a feeling as if a little dicky-bird were singing in my heart. There was blue again in the sky and the wind didn't always come from the East. I had received a night letter from Betty. She was leaving Birmingham the next week and was going with the aunt to a place she had in Florida to stay there a month, and then she was coming right home! I don't think I had realized how much I missed my dear one until I found she was coming home and was feeling herself again. I had just finished reading the telegram when the Mater came downstairs, and in my joy I caught her around the waist and swung her round twice until her feet left the floor. "Mercy on us!" she exclaimed, as I set her on a chair gasping, "what has got into the boy?" "Just happiness, that's all! Betty is coming home in a month."