But the boy could not wait; so, after he had told Peter about Ruth,—­and that took ten minutes, try as hard as he could to shorten the telling,—­during which the stuffed peppers were in evidence,—­and after Peter had replied with certain messages to Ruth,—­during which the spaghetti was served sizzling hot, with entrancing frazzlings of brown cheese clinging to the edges of the tin plate—­the Chief Assistant squared his elbows and plunged head-foremost into the subject.

“And now, I have got a surprise for you, Uncle Peter,” cried Jack, smothering his eagerness as best he could.

The old fellow held up his hand, reached for the shabby, dust-begrimed bottle, that had been sound asleep under the sidewalk for years; filled Jack’s glass, then his own; settled himself in his chair and said with a dry smile: 

“If it’s something startling, Jack, wait until we drink this,” and he lifted the slender rim to his lips.  “If it’s something delightful, you can spring it now.”

“It is both,” answered Jack.  “Listen and doubt your ears.  I had a letter from Uncle Arthur this morning asking me to come and see him about my Cumberland ore property, and I have just spent an hour with him.”

Peter put down his glass: 

“You had a letter from Arthur Breen—­about—­what do you mean, Jack.”

“Just what I say.”

Peter moved close to the table, and looked at the boy in wonderment.

“Well, what did he want?” He was all attention now.  Arthur Breen sending for Jack!—­and after all that had happened!  Well—­well!

“Wants me to put the Cumberland ore property father left me into one of his companies.”

“That fox!” The explosion cleared the atmosphere for an instant.

“That fox!” answered Jack, in a confirmatory tone; and then followed an account of the interview, the boy chuckling at the end of every sentence in his delight over the situation.

“And what are you going to do?” asked Peter in an undecided tone.  He had heard nothing so comical as this for years.

“Going to do nothing,—­that is, nothing with Uncle Arthur.  In the first place, the property is worthless, unless half a million of money is spent upon it.”

“Or is said to have been spent upon it,” rejoined Peter with a smile, remembering the Breen methods.

“Exactly so;—­and in the second place, I would rather tear up the deed than have it added to Uncle Arthur’s stock of balloons.”

Peter drummed on the table-cloth and looked out of the window.  The boy was right in principle, but then the property might not be a balloon at all; might in fact be worth a great deal more than the boy dreamed of.  That Arthur Breen had gone out of his way to send for Jack—­knowing, as Peter did, how systematically both he and his wife had abused and ridiculed him whenever his name was mentioned—­was positive evidence to Peter’s mind not only that the property had a value of some kind but that the discovery was of recent origin.