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It is true that a shiny alpaca office coat covered the excellent shoulders of the boy, but below that alpaca and under Scattergood's line of vision were trousers and carefully stretched over a hanger on a closet hook was a coat!
"One of them railroads runnin' up here," said he to the mountain just across the road from him, "would have spared me close to a dozen blisters." Conversation had expired on Scattergood's arrival, and the group on the porch converted itself into an audience. It was an audience that got its money's worth.
McKettrick vanished from the region and did not appear again except for flying visits to his rising plant at Tupper Falls. He never inspected so much as a foot of the new railroad back into the Goodhue tract and this, Scattergood very correctly took to be suspicious. The work was left utterly in Scattergood's hands, with no check upon him and no inspection.
It looked as if public opinion were overwhelmingly with the bill. It was Scattergood's first use of the weapon of public opinion. In this battle he learned its potentialities. Men who knew him well and were close to him in political matters declare he became the most skillful creator of a fictitious public opinion that ever lived in the state.
Scattergood's stock had gone down in Coldriver. True, his hardware store was thriving. In the two years his stock had increased from what his seven hundred and fifty dollars, with credit added, would buy, to an inventory of better than five thousand dollars, free of debt.
Half a day was spent selecting tools and implements for the farm, and though Pilkinton did not know it, it was Scattergood's selection that was purchased. Scattergood knew what was necessary and what would be economical, and that was what Pilkinton got, and nothing more. It netted Scattergood a pleasant profit, and Kent got the full equivalent of his money. "Preside at town meetin', don't you?"
He did not know where he was going, but expected to pick up information on that question en route. His method of reaching for it was to take a seat on a trunk in the baggage car. The railroad, Scattergood's individual property and his greatest step forward in his dream for the development of the Coldriver Valley, was but a year old now.
"I saw him," admitted Janice. "Know him?" "Of course not. He doesn't belong in Poketown, I'm sure." "Mebbe he will," said Walky, his eyes twinkling with fun again. Janice looked at him, puzzled. "Ain't you heard?" he questioned. "'Rill Scattergood's resigned and the school committee is lookin' for a new teacher. That feller's got the bee in his bonnet, they told me at Middletown."
For an instant the young man stood irresolute; then he reached slowly over, gathered up the money into a neat roll while Scattergood watched him intently and then, with suddenly set teeth, hurled the roll into Scattergood's face, and leaped around the desk. "You git!" he said, between his teeth. "Git, and take your filthy money with you...."
With his toes imprisoned in leather, Scattergood's brain refused to function, a characteristic which greatly chagrined his wife, Mandy so much so that she had considered sewing him up in his footwear, as certain mothers in the community sewed their children in their underwear for the winter. Scattergood had amassed a fortune that might be called handsome, but it had not made him effete.
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