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 at his cylinder. “Won’t burn your tongue. Smoke the tobacco down to the last grain, and it won’t burn your tongue. You change gears on it, kind of, like a car.”

“Well, I’m damned. How does it work?” Fairchild dragged up a chair, and the nephew showed him how it worked. “Well, I’m damned,” he repeated, taking fire. “Say, you ought to make a pile of money out of it, if you make it work, you know.”

“It works,” the nephew answered, joining his cylinders again. “Made a little one out of pine. Smoked pretty good for a pine pipe. It’ll work all right.”

“What kind of wood are you using now?”

“Cherry.” He carved and fitted intently, bending his coarse dark head above his work. Fairchild watched him. “Well, I’m damned,” he said again in a sort of heavy astonishment. “Funny nobody thought of it before. Say, we might form a stock company, you know, with Julius and Major Ayers. He’s trying to get rich right away at something that don’t require work, and this pipe is a lot better idea than the one he’s got, for I can’t imagine even Americans spending very much money for something that don’t do anything except keep your bowels open. That’s too sensible for us, even though we will buy anything Your sister tells me you and she are going to Yale college next month.”

“I am,” he corrected, without raising his head. “She just thinks she’s going too. That’s all. She kept on worrying dad until he said she could go. She’ll be wanting to do something else by then.”

“What does she do?” Fairchild asked. “I mean, does she have a string of beaux and run around dancing and buying things like most girls like her do?”

“Naw,” the nephew answered. “She spends most of her time and mine too tagging around after me. Oh, she’s all