This cool assumption that the sale was already consummated so
perturbed Thayer, that, along with the sure knowledge that he had
never seen so high a quality of rams, he was nettled into changing his
order to twenty carloads.

As he told Naismith, after they had regained the Big House and as they
chalked their cues to finish the interrupted game:

"It's my first visit to Forrest's. He's a wizard. I've been buying in
the East and importing. But those Shropshires won my judgment. You
noticed I doubled my order. Those Idaho buyers will be wild for them.
I only had buying orders straight for six carloads, and contingent on
my judgment for two carloads more; but if every buyer doesn't double
his order, straight and contingent, when he sees them rams, and if
there isn't a stampede for what's left, I don't know sheep. They're
the goods. If they don't jump up the sheep game of Idaho ... well,
then Forrest's no breeder and I'm no buyer, that's all."

As the warning gong for lunch rang out--a huge bronze gong from Korea
that was never struck until it was first indubitably ascertained that
Paula was awake--Dick joined the young people at the goldfish fountain
in the big patio. Bert Wainwright, variously advised and commanded by
his sister, Rita, and by Paula and her sisters, Lute and Ernestine,
was striving with a dip-net to catch a particularly gorgeous flower of
a fish whose size and color and multiplicity of fins and tails had led
Paula to decide to segregate him for the special breeding tank in the
fountain of her own secret patio. Amid high excitement, and much
squealing and laughter, the deed was accomplished, the big fish
deposited in a can and carried away by the waiting Italian gardener.