THAT green bronze swan of the fountain in the broad yard next door to
the Oliphants’ should have been given a new interpretation this season;
the open beak, forever addressing itself obliquely to the eastern sky,
might well have been thought to complain to heaven of the spiteful
hanging on of winter. It was a winter that long outwore its welcome, and
then kept returning like a quarrelsome guest forcing his way back to
renew argument after repeated ejectments;—the Shelbys’ swan was
fortunate to be of bronze, for a wet snow filled that
exasperated-looking beak of his choke-full one morning a month after the
lilacs had shown green buds along their stems. Then, adding mockery to
assault, this grotesque weather spent hour after hour patiently
constructing a long goatee of ice upon the helpless bird.
Martha Shelby knocked it off late in the afternoon, though by that time
the western sun had begun to make all icicles into opals, radiant with
frozen fire and beautiful. “Insulting thing!” Martha said, as she
brought the ferrule of her umbrella resentfully against the icicle,
which broke into pieces that clattered lightly down to the stone basin
below. “Of all the Smart Alecks I ever knew I think the worst one’s the
weather!”
Her companion, a thin young man with an astrakhan collar to his skirted
long overcoat, assented negligently. He had happened to overtake her as
she walked up National Avenue from downtown, and was evidently disposed
to extend the casual encounter at least as far as her door, for he went
on with her in that direction as he spoke.
“Yes, I dare say. Nature, in general, has a way of taking liberties with
us that we wouldn’t tolerate from our most intimate friends. I suspect
if we got at the truth of things we’d find that most of our legislation
is really an attempt to prevent Nature from getting the better of us.”
“Murder!” said Martha. “That’s too deep for me, Harlan! Let’s go on
talking about poor old Dan and things I can understand. Come into the
house and I’ll give you some tea; you’re the only man-citizen I know in
town who likes tea. I ought to warn you that papa thinks there’s
something queer about you since that day after the matinée when you came
in and had tea with me. He thought it was bad enough, your being at the
matinée—papa says if an old man is seen at a matinée it looks as if
he’s gone bankrupt and doesn’t care, but if it’s a young man he must be
out of a job and too lazy to look for a new one—and for any man not
only to go to a matinée, but to drink tea afterwards, well, papa was
terribly mystified about anybody named Oliphant doing such a thing! He
can’t imagine a man’s consenting to drink tea except to help fight off a
chill.”
“Oh, I know!” Harlan said. “I realize it’s a terrible thing for one to
do, only three generations away from the pioneers.”
As Martha chattered she had opened one of the double front doors, which
were unlocked, and now she preceded him into the large central hall,
floored with black and white squares of marble. A fine staircase, noble
in proportions and inevitably of black walnut, followed a curving upward
sweep against curved walls to the third story; while upon both sides of
the hall, broad and lofty doorways, with massive double doors standing
open, invited the caller to apartments heavily formal in brown velvet
and damasks of gold.
In obedience to a casual wave of Martha’s hand, as she disappeared
through a doorway at the other end of the hall, Harlan left his overcoat
and hat upon a baroque gold console-table and entered the drawing-room
to his left. Here a fire of soft coal sought to enliven a ponderous
black-marble mantelpiece, and Harlan, warming his hands, gazed
disapprovingly at the painting hung upon the heavy paper of the wall
above. This painting was not without celebrity, but after looking at it
seriously for several minutes Harlan shook his head at it, and was
caught in the act by Martha, who came in with a light step behind him.
“Don’t scold the poor thing, Harlan!” she said; and, as he turned, a
little startled, he took note again of a fact he had many times remarked
before: she moved with a noiseless rapidity unusual in so large a
person. Moreover, her quickness was twice in evidence now; for she had
changed her dark cloth dress for a gown of gray silk; and as final
testimony to her celerity, when she sat in a chair by the fire and
crossed her knees, a silken instep of gray was revealed between the
silver buckle of her slipper and the hem of the long skirt she wore in
the mode of that time.
“You’re like lightning, Martha,” Harlan said;—“but not like thunder. I
didn’t even hear you come into the room. What is it you don’t want me to
scold?”
“Poor papa’s Corot.”
“I wasn’t scolding it. I was only thinking: What’s the use of having a
Corot if you hang it so high and so much against the dazzle of the
firelight that nobody can see it.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter to papa,” Martha said cheerfully. “Papa doesn’t
care to see it; and he doesn’t care whether any one else sees it or not.
He bought it the summer the doctor made him go abroad, after mamma died.
Somebody in Paris convinced him he ought to own an important picture.
They took him first to see a Bougereau and he got very indignant. So
they apologized and hurried out this Corot and told him who Corot was;
so he bought it. All he cares about is that he owns it; he doesn’t think
about it as a thing to _look_ at any more than the bonds in his
safety-deposit boxes. He knows they’re there, and they’re worth just so
much, and they’re his; and that’s all he cares about. You know papa runs
the house to suit himself.”
“No,” Harlan returned skeptically. “I can’t say I quite know that.”
“You don’t?” She laughed and went on: “Well, he does; especially when he
gets set in his head. A few of papa’s notions are just molasses, but
most of ’em are like plaster of Paris;—if you don’t change ’em in a
hurry before they set you never _can_ change ’em! That’s the trouble
just now; he’s turned into plaster of Paris about poor Dan’s land
operations, confound him!”
She uttered this denunciation with a sharpness of emphasis not
ill-natured, but earnest enough to make Harlan look at her seriously
across the small table just set between them by a coloured housemaid.
“You’ve been trying to alter your father’s opinion of Dan’s commercial
ability, have you?” he inquired.
“Yes, I have,” she answered crisply. “What’s the matter with the
business men of this town, anyway? Why won’t they help Dan do a big
thing?”
At this Harlan allowed his eyes to fall from the troubled and yet
spirited inquiry of her direct gaze; he looked at the cup he accepted
from her, and frowned slightly as he answered: “Of course they think
he’s a visionary. The most enthusiastic home boomer in the lot doesn’t
dream the town’ll ever reach out as far as Dan’s foolish ‘Addition.’”
“How do you know it’s foolish?”
“Why, because the population would have to double to reach even the edge
of his land, and this town hasn’t the kind of impetus that develops
suburbs. You know what sort of place it is, yourself, Martha. It’s only
an overgrown market-town, and an overgrown market-town is what it’ll
always be.”
“Don’t you like it?” she asked challengingly. “Don’t you even like the
town you were born in and grew up in?”
“That sounds like Dan. His latest phase is to become oratorical about
the enormous future of our own, our native city—since he bought the
Ornaby farm! I suppose I like it as well as I like any city except
Florence. I don’t think it’s as ugly as New York, for instance, because
the long stretches of big shade trees palliate our streets half the
year, and nothing palliates the unevenness and everlasting tearing down
and building up and digging and blasting and steam-riveting of New York.
But I do hate the crudeness of things here.”
“That’s the old, old cheap word for us,” she said, “‘Crude!’”
Harlan laughed. “You _have_ been listening to Dan, the civic patriot!
Crudeness isn’t _our_ specialty; the whole country’s crude, Martha.”
“Compared to what? China?”
“You’ll be telling me all about our literary societies and women’s clubs
and the factories, if I don’t take care,” he returned lightly. “How
dreadful all that is!” He sighed, and continued: “I suppose you’ve been
trying to convince your father he ought to extend one of his street-car
lines out into the wilderness toward Dan’s ‘Addition.’ Is that what
you’ve been up to with the old gentleman, Martha?”
“Yes, it is,” she said quickly. “If he doesn’t, how are people to get
out there?”
“Quite so! That’s one reason why everybody downtown is laughing at Dan.
Your father will never do it, Martha. Have you any idea he will?”
“Not much of one,” she admitted sadly, and shook her head. “He doesn’t
understand Dan’s theory that the car line would pay for itself by fares
from the people who’d build along the line.”
“No, I shouldn’t think he’d understand that—at least not very
sympathetically!”
“Dan isn’t discouraged, is he?” she asked.
“No, he isn’t the temperament to be discouraged by anything. It’s a
matter of disposition, not of facts, and Dan was born to be a helpless
optimist all his life. For instance, he still believes that when he
marries his Miss McMillan and brings her here to live, grandmother will
learn to like her! Yet he ought to know by this time that grandmother’s
a perfect duplicate of your father in the matter of plaster of Paris. I
suppose you’ve seen Miss McMillan’s photograph, Martha?”
Harlan glanced at her as if casually, but she answered without any
visible embarrassment: “Oh, yes; he brought it over, and talked of her a
whole evening. If the photograph’s like her——” She paused.
“It’s one of those photographs that _are_ like,” Harlan observed. “My
own judgment is that she’s not precisely the girl to put on a pair of
overalls and go out and help Dan clear the underbrush off his
‘Addition.’”
“Is he doing that himself? I haven’t seen him for days and days.”
“No,” said Harlan. “You wouldn’t, because he _is_ doing just about that.
I believe he has five or six darkies helping him; but he keeps overalls
for himself out there in a shed. He gets up before six, drives out in
his runabout, with a nose-bag of oats for his horse under the seat, and
he gets home after dark ready to drop, but still talking about what a
success he’s going to make of the great and only ‘Ornaby Addition.’ He
wears shabby clothes all the time—he seems not to care at all how he
looks—and Saturdays he comes home at noon and spends the rest of the
day downtown making orations to bankers and business men, especially
your father.”
“To no effect at all,” Martha said gloomily.
“Oh, but I think he’s had an extraordinarily distinct effect!”
“What effect is it?”
“Well, I’m afraid,” Harlan said slowly;—“I’m afraid he’s been
successful in making himself the laughing stock of the town.”
“They—they think he’s just a joke?”
“Not ‘just’ one,” the precise Harlan replied. “They think he’s the
biggest one they’ve ever seen.”
Martha uttered a sound of angry protest, though she did not speak at
once, but stared frowningly at the fire; then she turned abruptly to
Harlan. “Why don’t you help him?”
“I? Well, he hasn’t asked me to help him, precisely. Did he tell you
I——”
“No; he didn’t say anything about you. But why don’t you?”
“As a matter of fact,” Harlan explained, a little annoyed, “he didn’t
ask me for help, but he did want me to go in with him on strictly
business grounds. He was certain that if I joined him as a partner, it
would be a great thing for both of us. He wanted me to do the same thing
he did—invest what grandfather left me in making the Ornaby farm
blossom with horrible bungalows and corner drug stores.”
“And you wouldn’t,” Martha said affirmatively.
“Why should I, since I don’t believe in his scheme?”
“But why couldn’t you believe in Dan himself?”
“Good heavens!” Harlan exclaimed, and uttered a sound of impatient
laughter. “I’ve never looked upon Dan as precisely a genius, Martha.
Besides, even if by a miracle he could do something of what he dreams he
can, what on earth would be the use of it? It would only be an extension
of ugliness into a rather inoffensive landscape. I don’t believe he can
do it in the first place; and in the second, I don’t believe in doing it
even if it can be done.”
“Don’t you?” she asked, and looked at him thoughtfully. “What do you
believe in, Harlan?”
“A number of things,” he said gravely. “For instance, I don’t believe in
kicking up a lot of dust and confusion to turn a nice old farm into
horrible-looking lots with hideous signboards blaring all over ’em.”
“How characteristic!”
“What is?”
“I asked you what you believed in,” she explained. “You said you
believed in ‘a number of things,’ and went straight on: ‘For instance, I
don’t believe——’”
“Yes,” he said, “I was keeping to the argument about Dan.”
Martha laughed at his calm sophistry, but was content to seem to accept
it and to waive her point. “What do your father and mother think of
‘Ornaby Addition’?”
“Oh, you know them! They understand as well as anybody that it’s all
folly, but they don’t say so to Dan. I think poor father would even put
something in just to please Dan, if he could spare it after what he’s
lost in bad loans this year.”
“How about Mrs. Savage?”
“Grandmother!” Harlan was amused at this suggestion. “Dan has to keep
away from her; she’s taken such a magnificently healthy prejudice
against his little Miss McMillan she won’t talk to him about anything
else, and Dan can’t stand it. Not much chance for ‘Ornaby’ there,
Martha!”
“No; she _is_ a plaster of Paris old thing!”
“Inordinately. She’s always been set about _me_, Martha,” Harlan
remarked with a ruefulness in which there was a measure of philosophic
amusement. “She’s always maintained that I’d never amount to anything—I
have the terrible faults of being an egotist and smoking cigarettes—but
she’s sometimes admitted she thought Dan might. That’s why she’s furious
with him about throwing himself away on this ‘spoiled ninny of a
photograph girl’—her usual way of referring to Miss McMillan.
Grandmother’s twice as furious with him as if she hadn’t always been
like you, Martha.”
“Like me? How?”
“I mean about your feeling toward Dan and me.” Harlan smiled, but his
eyes were expressive of something far from amusement. It was as if here
he referred to an old and troubling puzzlement of his, but had long ago
resigned himself to the impossibility of finding a solution. “I mean
she’s like you because she’s always thought so much more of Dan than she
has of me, Martha.”
“Perhaps it’s because you’ve never seemed to think much of anything,
yourself,” she said gently. “Perhaps we’re apt to like people best who
do a great deal of liking themselves.”
“I might like to have you like me, Martha,” Harlan ventured, and there
was a quiet wistfulness about him then that touched her. “I might like
it better than you know.”
She looked at him gravely. “I do like you,” she said. “I like you
anyhow; but even if I didn’t, I’d like you because you’re Dan’s
brother.”
Harlan sighed, but contrived a smile to accompany his sigh. “Yes; I’ve
always understood that, Martha; and you’re not at all peculiar in your
preference. Not only you and grandmother, but everybody else likes Dan
much better than me.”
“And yet,” Martha said, a smouldering glow in her kind eyes, “you tell
me that everybody’s laughing at him.”
“Haven’t you heard so yourself?”
“Yes, I have,” she cried angrily. “But how can they, if they like him?”
“Isn’t it plain enough? They like him because he’s a democratic,
friendly soul, and they laugh at him because he’s so absurd about the
Ornaby farm.”
“And you think he’s got to do the whole thing absolutely alone?”
“Why, no,” Harlan said, correcting her lightly, “I don’t think he’s
going to be able to do the whole thing at all. He’ll get part way and
then of course he’ll have to quit, because his money’ll give out. What
he has left may last him a year or even longer, if he keeps on just
doing with his little gang of darkies and himself.”
“And in the meantime, he’ll also keep on being a ‘laughing stock?’
That’s what you said, didn’t you?”
“I don’t think it was an exaggeration,” Harlan returned, defending
himself, for her tone was sharply accusing. “After all,” he went on,
with placative lightness, “isn’t it even rather a triumph in its way?
You see, Martha, it isn’t every young man of his age who’d be well
enough known to occupy that position.”
“A laughing stock?”
“Why, yes. Don’t you see it means a degree of prominence not at all
within the reach of every Tom, Dick, and Harry. For instance, _I_
couldn’t touch it: I don’t know enough people; but Dan’s one of those
men of whom it’s said, ‘Oh, everybody in town knows _him!_’ So, you see,
since he’s run wild over this Ornaby Addition, why, he actually has the
whole town laughing at him.”
“Since he’s run wild!” she echoed scornfully. “And you say you don’t
exaggerate! How has he ‘run wild?’”
“Ask your father,” was Harlan’s response, delivered quietly, though with
some irritation; and Martha said sharply that she would, indeed; but
this was mere retort, signifying no genuine intention on her part, for
she knew well enough what her father would say. He had been saying it
over and over, every evening of late; and her discussions with him of
Dan Oliphant and “Ornaby Addition” had reached that point of feeble
acrimony at which a participant with any remnant of wisdom falls back
upon a despairing silence—a silence despairing of the opponent’s
sanity. Martha had no mind to release her father from the oppression of
this silence of hers, merely to hear him repeat himself.
She knew, moreover, that Harlan had not far overshot the mark when he
intimated that Dan had become the laughing stock of the town; nor was it
grossly an exaggeration to describe him as “making orations to bankers
and business men, especially your father.” The enthusiast for “Ornaby
Addition” had indeed become somewhat oratorical upon his great subject;
and the bankers and business men to whom he made speeches not only
laughed about him, as did their secretaries and clerks and
stenographers, distributing this humour widely, but often they laughed
at him and rallied him, interrupting him as he prophesied coming
splendours.
“You’ll see!” he would answer, laughing himself, albeit rather
plaintively. “You can sit there and make all the fun o’ me you want to,
but the day’ll come when you’ll wish you’d had a hand in makin’ this
city what it _is_ goin’ to be made! It isn’t only the money you’d get
out of it, but the pride you’d take in it, and what you’d be able to
tell your grandchildren about it. Why, gentlemen, ten years from
now——” Then he would go on painting his air castles for them while
they chuckled or sometimes grew noisily hilarious.
But the toughest and most powerful of them all declined to chuckle;
there was little good-nature and no hilarity left in dry old Mr. Shelby.
He was seventy, and, as he crisply expressed himself, at his age he
hated to have his time wasted for him; he didn’t see any pleasure in
listening to the goings-on of a fool-boy about two minutes out of
school! This viewpoint he went so far as to communicate to Dan directly,
as the latter stood before him in the old gentleman’s office. For that
matter, Mr. Shelby seldom cared to be anything except direct; it was his
declared belief that directness was the only thing that paid, in the
long run. “Usin’ a lot of tact and all that stuff to spare touchy
people’s vanity, it’s all a waste of energy and they only hate you worse
in the long run,” he said. “So I’m not goin’ to trouble to use any tact
on _you_, young Mr. Dan Oliphant!”
He was a formidable old figure as he sat in his mahogany swivel-chair,
which every instant threatened to swing him about to face his big, clean
desk again with his back to the visitor. Neat with an extremity of
precision, this old man had not altered perceptibly in appearance for
many years, not even in his clothes; he was now exactly as he was in
Dan’s childhood. The gray chin-beard was the same precisely trimmed
short oblong, and no whiter; the same incessant slight frown was set
between the thin gray eyebrows; the same small black necktie showed a
reticent bow beneath the flat white collar that was too large for the
emaciated neck; and the same clean white waistcoat was worn under the
same black “cutaway” coat; the same gray-and-black-striped trousers
descended to the same patent-leather “congress gaiters.” Twice a year
Mr. Shelby gave an order—always the same order—to his tailor; he never
left his house in the evening; had not taken any exercise whatever since
his youth; went to bed always at nine o’clock; always ate exactly the
same breakfast of oatmeal, an egg, and one cup of coffee; was never even
slightly indisposed; and appeared to be everlasting. Compared to such a
man, granite or basalt might be imagined as of an amiable plasticity;
yet the ardent Dan hopefully persisted in seeking to remodel him.
“Why, of course, Mr. Shelby,” he assented;—“that’s just the way I want
you to feel; I don’t want you to use any tact on me. I don’t need it.
When I’m layin’ out a proposition like this before a real business man,
all I want is his attention to the facts.”
“What facts?”
“The facts of the future,” the enthusiast replied instantly. “The
future——”
“What d’you mean talkin’ about the facts of the future? There ain’t any
facts in the future. How you goin’ to have any facts that haven’t
happened yet? A fact is something that’s either happened or _is_
happening right now.”
“No, sir!” Dan exclaimed. “The present is only a fraction of a second,
if it’s even that much; the past isn’t any time at all—it’s gone;
everything that amounts to anything is in the future. The future is all
that’s worth anybody’s thinkin’ about. That’s why I want you to think
about the future of your car lines, Mr. Shelby.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” the old gentleman said sardonically. “You think I
_ain’t_ thinkin’ about it, so you called around for the fourth time to
draw my attention to it?”
“Yes, sir,” the undaunted young man replied. “I don’t mean exactly you
don’t think about it; I just mean you don’t seem to me to consider all
the possibilities.”
“Such as old Ranse Ornaby’s ex-hog-wallow and corn-patch, for instance?”
“That ex-hog-wallow and corn-patch, Mr. Shelby,” Dan said proudly,
“consists of five hundred and thirty-one and two-thirds acres. If you’d
only drive out there in your carriage as I’ve asked you to——”
“Good heavens!” Mr. Shelby interrupted. “I chopped wood there thirty
years before you were born! D’you think I got to hitch up and go
buggy-ridin’ to know where Ranse Ornaby’s farm is?”
“It isn’t his, sir,” Dan reminded him. “It belongs to me. I only meant,
if you’d come out there I think you’d see some changes since I’ve been
layin’ it out in city lots.”
“City lots? What city you talkin’ about? Where’s any city in that part
o’ the county? _I_ never knew there was any city up that way.”
“But there is, sir!”
“What’s the name of it?”
“The city of the future!” Dan proclaimed, his eyes brightening as he
heard his own phrase. “_This_ city when it begins to reach its growth!
Why, in ten years from now——”
“Ten years from now!” the old man echoed, with angry mockery. “What in
Constantinople you talkin’ about? D’you know you’re gettin’ to be a
regular by-word in this town? Old George Rowe told me yesterday at his
bank, he says you got a nickname like some Indian. It’s ‘Young
Ten-Years-From-Now.’ That’s what they call you: ‘Young
Ten-Years-From-Now’! George Rowe asked me: he says, ‘Has Young
Ten-Years-From-Now been around your way makin’ any more speeches?’ he
says. He says that’s the nickname everybody’s got for you. It’s all over
town, he says.”
Dan’s colour heightened, but he laughed and said: “Well, I expect I can
stand it. It isn’t a mean nickname, particularly, and I don’t guess they
intend any harm by it. I shouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be
good advertisin’ for the Addition, Mr. Shelby.”
“_I_ should,” the old man remarked promptly. “I’d be surprised if
anything turned out good for the Addition!”
“No,” said Dan. “That nickname might do a lot o’ good; though the truth
is I’m not talkin’ about ten years from now nearly as much as I am about
only two or three years from now. _Ten_ years from now this city’ll be
way out _beyond_ Ornaby Addition!”
“Oh, lord! Hear him holler!”
“It will,” Dan insisted, his colour glowing the more. “It will! Why, you
go down to the East Side in New York and look at the way people are
crowded, with millions and millions more every year tryin’ to find
footroom. They can’t do it! They’ve _got_ to go _some_where. They’ve got
to spread all over the country. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of
’em have got to come _here_. That’s not all; we’ve got the finest
climate in the world, and the babies that get born here practically all
of ’em _live_, and there’s tens of thousands of ’em born every year.
Besides that, this city’s not only the natural market of a tremendous
agricultural area, but the railroads make it an absolutely ideal
manufacturing centre. Why, it’s just naturally impossible to _stop_ the
growth that’s comin’, even if anybody wanted to, and the funny thing to
me is that so few of you business men see it!”
“You listen to me,” the old man said;—“that is, unless you got the
habit of talkin’ so much you _can’t_ listen! You been tellin’ the men
that run this town quite a few things about our own business lately;
it’s time somebody told you something about your own. You’re a good deal
like your grandfather Savage used to be before your grandmother sat on
him and never let him up. He was always wantin’ to put his money into
any fool thing and lose it, until she did that, and I hear she tried to
stop _you_, but you didn’t have the gumption to see she’s right. Now,
look here: I’ve been here since there was a population of seven hundred
people chillin’ every other day, eatin’ quinine by the handful, and
draggin’ one foot after the other out of two-foot mud if they had to get
off a horse and walk anywhere. Last census we had a hundred and eighty
thousand. I’ve seen it all! D’you expect you can tell _me_ anything
about this town?”
“No, sir; not about the history of it or anything that’s past. But about
the future——”
“You listen!” Shelby commanded irascibly. “You come around here blowin’
out your chest and tellin’ us old settlers that this town has grown
some——”
“No, sir; I know you know all about that a thousand times better’n I do.
I only use it to prove the town’s goin’ to keep _on_ growin’. Why, Mr.
Shelby, ten years from now——”
“Great Gee-mun-nently!” the old man shouted. “Can’t you listen at _all?_
Of _course_ it’s goin’ to keep on growin’, but not the way you think it
is. It’s already reached its land size, or mighty near it, because
there’s plenty vacant lots inside the city limits—hunderds and hunderds
of ’em—and people want to live near their business; they don’t want to
go way out in the country where there ain’t any sewers nor any gas nor
city water.”
“But they’ll _get_ all that, Mr. Shelby. They will as soon as there’s
enough of ’em to make it pay the water company and the gas company to
run their pipes out; and there’d _be_ enough of ’em, if you’d lay even a
single track out to——”
“Out to Ranse Ornaby’s frog pond!” the old man interrupted angrily. “You
think if I’d throw away a hundred thousand dollars like so much dirt,
that’d bring the millennium to the old hog-wallow, do you, young man?
Look out that window behind you. What’s the biggest thing you see?”
“The First National Bank Building.”
“Yes, sir. Eleven stories high, and the Sheridan Trust Company’s got
plans to put up a block higher’n that. People’ll build up in the air,
not only for business, but to live in flats, but they won’t go ’way out
to a hog-wallow in the country when there ain’t a reason on earth for
’em to. You seem to think people ride on street-cars for pleasure! Well,
I’ve had some experience in the business, and I can tell you they don’t,
except in mighty hot weather; they ride on street-cars to get somewhere
they want to _go_; and goodness knows nobody wants to go to Ranse
Ornaby’s farm.”
“But, Mr. Shelby, if you’d listen just a minute——”
“I’ve listened all I’m a-goin’ to,” the old man said decisively. “This
is the fourth time you been here tellin’ me all about this town that
wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me and some the other men you been
lecturin’ to about it. You go at me as if I’d just put up at the hotel
and never saw the place before, and what’s worse you’ve gone and got
Martha so she keeps ding-dongin’ at me till I can’t eat my supper in
peace! It’s about time for you to understand it’s no use.”
“But, Mr. Shelby, if you’d just let me put the _facts_ before you——”
“Facts about what’s goin’ to happen ten years from now? No, sir!” The
swivel-chair began to turn, making it clear that this interview had
drawn to a close. “I thank you, but I can make up my own facts, if I so
desire!” And the back of the chair and its occupant were offered to the
view of the caller.
Dan made a final effort. “Mr. Shelby, I hope you don’t mean this for
your last word on the subject, because just as sure as you’re born the
day will come when——”
“Will it?” the old man interrupted; and turned his head angrily, so that
his neat beard was thrust upward by his shoulder and seemed to bristle.
“You go teach your grandma Savage to suck eggs,” he said with fierce
mockery, “but don’t come around here any more tellin’ _me_ where I
better lay my car tracks!”
“Well, sir, I——”
“That’s _all!_”
“Yes, sir,” Dan said, a little depressed for the moment.
But in the hall, outside the office, he recovered his cheerfulness, and,
after consulting a memorandum book, decided to call on Mr. George Howe,
the president of the First National Bank. Since yesterday Dan had
thought of several new things that were certain to happen within the
next ten years.