“I generally admire persistency,” remarked Mr. Clark one day to Mrs. Smith and Dorothy, and the Ethels, “but in this case it irritates me.  When you tell a man that you can’t sell to him and that you wouldn’t if you could it seems as if he might take the hint and go away.”

“I don’t like him,” and Mrs. Smith gave a shrug of distaste.  “He doesn’t look you squarely in the face.”

“I hate that trick he has of brushing his hair out of his eyes.  It makes me nervous,” confessed the younger Miss Clark.

“I can’t see why a botanist doesn’t occasionally look at a plant,” observed Dorothy.  “We’ve watched him day after day and we’ve almost never seen him do a thing except push his stick into the ground and examine it afterwards.”

“Do you remember that girl who was with him at the Flower Festival?” inquired Ethel Brown.  “I saw her with him again this afternoon at the field.  When he pushed his cane down something seemed to stick to it when it came up and he wiped it off with his hand and gave it to her.”

“Could you see what it was like?”

“It looked like dirt to me.”

“What did she do with it?”

“She took it and began to turn it around in her hand, rubbing it with her fingers the way Dorothy does when she’s making her clay things.”

Mr. Clark brought down his foot with a thump upon the porch.

“I’ll bet you five million dollars I know what he’s up to!” he exclaimed.

“What?” “What?” “What?” rang out from every person on the porch.

“I’ll go right over there this minute and find out for myself.”

“Find out what?”

“Do tell us.”

“What do you think it is?”

Mr. Clark paused on the steps as he was about to set off.

“Clay,” he answered briefly.  “There are capital clays in different parts of New Jersey.  Don’t you remember there are potteries that make beautiful things at Trenton?  I shouldn’t wonder a bit if that field has pretty good clay and this man wants to buy it and start a pottery there.”

“Next to my house!” exclaimed Mrs. Smith disgustedly.

“Don’t be afraid; if we’re ever able to sell the field you’re the person who will get it,” promised the old gentleman’s sisters in chorus.  “We don’t want a pottery on the street any more than you do,” they added, and expressed a wish that their brother might be able to convince the persistent would-be purchaser of the utter hopelessness of his wishes.

“What do you hear from Stanley?” Mrs. Smith asked.

“He’s still quite at sea in Pittsburg—­if one may use such an expression about a place as far from the ocean as that!” laughed Miss Clark.  “He thinks he’ll go fast if ever he gets a start, but he hasn’t found any trace of the people yet.  He’s going to search the records not only in Allegheny County but in Washington and Westmoreland and Fayette Counties and the others around Pittsburg, if it’s necessary.  He surely is persistent.”