It was not what he said, but his jovial air of secret understanding, that made Mrs. Bubble flush and laugh nervously and soften. "Oh, I reckon I can get along," she said. Miss Fannie, with a wondering glance at Wallingford, had already flown up-stairs, and J. Rufus set himself deliberately to be agreeable to Mrs. Bubble. When Fannie came tripping down again in an incredibly short space of time, having shaken herself out of one frock and into another with an expedition which surprised even herself, she found her stepmother actually giggling! And when the young couple drove away in the bright, shining new rig behind the handsome bays, Mrs. Bubble watched after them with something almost like wistfulness. She had been young herself, once--and not so very long ago! Opposite the Bubble swamp Wallingford stopped for a moment. "I hope to be a very near neighbor of yours," said he, waving his hand out toward the wonderful deposit of genuine Etruscan black mud. "Did your father tell you about the pottery studios which may be built here?" "Not a thing," she confessed with a slightly jealous laugh. "Papa never tells us anything at home. We'll hear it on the street, no doubt, as we usually do." "Your father is a most estimable man, but I fear he makes a grave mistake in not telling you about things," declared Wallingford. "I believe in the value of a woman's intuition, and if I were as closely related to you as your father I am sure I should confide all my prospects to you." Miss Fannie gave a little inward gasp. That serious tide in the talk, fraught with great possibilities, for which every girl longs and which every girl dreads, was already setting ashore. "You might get fooled," she said. "Father don't think any woman has very much gumption, and least of all me, since--since he married again." "I understand," said Wallingford gently, and drove on. "Just to show you how _much_ differently I look at things from your father, I'm going to tell you all about the black pottery project and see what you think of it." Thereupon he explained to her in minute detail, a wealth of which came to him on the spur of the moment, the exact workings of the Etruscan pottery art. He painted for her, in the gray of stone and the yellow of face brick and the red of tiling, the beautiful studio buildings that were to be erected yonder facing the swamp; he showed her through cozy, cheerfully lighted apartments in those studios, where the best trained artists of Europe, under the direction of the wizard, Vittoreo Matteo, should execute ravishments of Etruscan black pottery; he showed her, as the bays pranced on, connoisseurs and collectors coming from all over the country to visit the Blakeville studios, and carrying away priceless gems of the ceramic art at incalculable prices! The girl drank in all these details with thirsty avidity.