what I could say if I let
myself go. I've been holding in because of you. I could have had you so
locoed you couldn't have understood a thing I meant if I hadn't
been--been considerate. But I know you don't like slang so I try to cut
it out. You may not believe it but I do try--honest, I do."

"I believe you, laddie," returned his mother kindly. "It's hard, I
know, with all the other boys talking like barbarians. Now go on about
Mr. Whitney. Did he contrive to make the machine the Georgia gentlemen
wanted?"

"Yes, siree!" continued Carl with enthusiasm. "Mrs. Greene gave him a
room to work in down in the basement of her house and he set right
about the job. Unluckily he had never seen any cotton growing because
he had always lived in the North, you know. In fact, he had never laid
eyes on cotton at all until it was made into cloth, so of course he
hadn't much of an idea what he was up against, and the first thing he
had to do was to scurry round and get specimens of cotton with the
seeds in it. It wasn't so easy to do just then, either, because it was
not the season for cotton-gathering and he had to hunt and hunt to get
some of the last season's crop. I believe he finally got what he needed
from a warehouse in New Orleans. Anyhow, he got the cotton pods
somewhere and found out better where he stood. And that reminds me, Ma,
that the teacher told us there were ever so many different kinds of
cotton; and that the Upland cotton, growing in the South, had green
seeds that stuck like--like _anything_ to the white part. You could
hardly separate the two without ruining the cotton fibers and you can
see that as they were to be spun they must not be broken."

"Mr. Whitney did have a puzzle to work out."

"You've said it, Ma! He sure had," beamed Carl. "Well, he kept fussing
round, and fussing round, and by and by he managed to get together a
simple sort of contrivance that would do what he wanted it to. It was
no great shakes of a machine. Any blacksmith or wheelwright could have
made it if he had happened to think of it first. In fact, lots of other
people did make gins like it. That is why Whitney never got rich, the
teacher said."

"But didn't he get his invention patented?" inquired Mrs. McGregor,
laying aside the tulle she was beading.

"Not until it was too late. You see, Mrs. Greene was so set up to think
Mr. Whitney had done the deed she had predicted he would that she had
to go blabbing all over town how clever