On the way west Grant gradually unfolded his plan to Linder, who accepted it with his customary stoicism.
“I’m not very strong for a scheme that hasn’t got any profits in it,” Linder confessed. “It doesn’t sound human.”
“I don’t notice that you have ever figured very high in profits on your own account,” Grant retorted. “Your usefulness has been in making them for other people. I suppose if I would let you help to swell my bank account you would work for me for board and lodging, but as I refuse to do that I shall have to pay you three times Transley’s rate. I don’t know what he paid you, but I suspect that for every dollar you earned for yourself you earned two for him, so I am going to base your scale accordingly. You are to go on with the physical work at once; buy the horses, tractors, machinery; break up the land, fence it, build the houses and barns; in short, you are to superintend everything that is done with muscle or its substitute. I will bring Murdoch out shortly to take charge of the clerical details and the general organization. As for myself, after I have bought the land and placed the necessary funds to the credit of the company I propose to keep out of the limelight. I will be the heart of the undertaking; Murdoch will be the head, and you are to be the hands, and I hope you two conspirators won’t give me palpitation. You think it a mistake to work without profits, but Murdoch thinks it a sin. When I lay my plans before him I am quite prepared to hear him insist upon calling in an alienist.”
“It’s YOUR money,” Linder assented, laconically. “What are YOU going to do?”
“I’m going to buy a half section of my own, and I’m going to start myself on it on identically the same terms that I offer to the shareholders in my company. I want to prove by my own experience that it can be done, but I must keep away from the company. Human nature is a clinging vine at best, and I don’t want it clinging about me. You will notice that my plan, unlike most communistic or socialist ventures, relieves the individual of no atom of responsibility. I give him the opportunity, but I put it up to him to make good with that opportunity. I have not overlooked the fact that a man is a man, and never can be made quite into a machine.”
The two friends discussed at great length the details of the Big Idea, and upon arrival in the West Linder lost no time in preparing blue-prints and charts descriptive of the improvements to be made on the land and the order in which the work was to be carried on. Grant bought a tract suitable to his purpose, and the wheels of the machine which was to blaze a path for the State were set in motion. When this had been done Grant turned to the working out of his own individual experiment.
During the period in which these arrangements were being made it was inevitable that Grant should have heard more or less of Transley. He had not gone out of his way to seek information of the contractor, but it rather had been forced upon him. Transley’s name was frequently heard in the offices of the business men with whom he had to do; it was mentioned in local papers with the regularity peculiar to celebrities in comparatively small centres. Transley, it appeared, had become something of a power in the land. Backed by old Y.D.‘s capital he had carried some rather daring ventures through to success. He had seized the panicky moments following the outbreak of the war to buy heavily on the wheat and cattle markets, and increases in prices due to the world’s demand for food had made him one of the wealthy men of the city. The desire of many young farmers to enlist had also afforded an opportunity to acquire their holdings for small considerations, and Transley had proved his patriotism by facilitating the ambitions of as many men in this position as came to his attention. The fact that even before the war ended the farms which he acquired in this way were worth several times the price he paid was only an incident in the transactions.
But no word of Transley’s domestic affairs reached Grant, who told himself that he had ceased to be interested in them, but kept an alert ear nevertheless. It would seem that Transley rather eclipsed his wife in the public eye.
So Grant set about with the development of his own farm, and kept his mind occupied with it and with his larger experiment—except when it went flirting with thoughts of Phyllis Bruce. He was rather proud of the figure he had used to Linder, of the head, hands, and heart of his organization, but to himself he admitted that that figure was incomplete. There was a soul as well, and that soul was the girl whose inspiring presence had in some way jerked his mind out of the stagnant backwaters in which the war had left it. There was no doubt of that. He had written to Murdoch to come west and undertake new work for him. He had intimated that the change would be permanent, and that it might be well to bring the family....
He selected a farm where a ridge of foothills overlooked a broad valley receding into the mountains. The dealer had no idea of selling him this particular piece of land; they were bound for a half section farther up the slope when Grant stopped on the brow of the hill to feast his eyes on the scene that lay before him. It burst upon him with the unexpectedness peculiar to the foothill valleys; miles of gently undulating plain, lying apparently far below, but in reality rising in a sharp ascent toward the snow-capped mountains looking down silently through their gauze of blue-purple afternoon mist. At distances which even his trained eye would not attempt to compute lay little round lakes like silver coins on the surface of the prairie; here and there were dark green bluffs of spruce; to the right a ribbon of river, blue-green save where the rapids churned it white, and along its edge a fringe of leafy cottonwoods; at vast intervals square black plots of plowed land like sections on a chess-board of the gods, and farm buildings cut so clear in the mountain atmosphere that the sense of space was lost and they seemed like child-houses just across the way.
Grant turned to his companion with an animation in his face which almost startled the prosaic dealer in real estate.
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “We don’t need to go any farther if you can sell me this.”
“Sure I can sell you this,” said the dealer, looking at him somewhat queerly. “That is, if you want it. I thought you were looking for a wheat farm.”
The man’s total lack of appreciation irritated Grant unreasonably. “Wheat makes good hog fodder,” he retorted, “but sunsets keep alive the soul. What is the price?”
Again the dealer gave him a queer sidelong look, and made as though to argue with him, then suddenly seemed to change his purpose. Perhaps he reflected that strange things happened to the boys overseas.
“I’ll get you the price in town,” he said. “You are sure it will suit?”
“Suit? No king in Christendom has his palace on a site like this. I’d go round the world for it.”
“You’re the doctor,” said the dealer, turning his car.
Grant completed the purchase, ordered lumber for a house and barn, and engaged a carpenter to superintend the construction. It was one of his whims that he would do most of the work himself.
“I guess I’m rather a man of whims,” he reflected, as he stood on the brow of the hill where the material for his buildings had been delivered. “It was a whim which first brought me west, and a whim which has brought me west again. I have a whim about my money, a whim about my farm, a whim about my buildings. I do not do as other people do, which is the unpardonable sin. To Linder I am a jester, to Murdoch a fanatic, to our friend the real estate dealer a fool; I even noticed my honest carpenter trying to ask me something about shell shock! Well—they’re MY whims, and I get an immense amount of satisfaction out of them.”
The days that followed were the happiest Grant had known since childhood. The carpenter, a thin, twisted man, bowed with much labor at the bench, and answering to the name Peter, sold his services by the day and manifested a sympathy amounting to an indulgence toward the whims of his employer. So long as the wages were sure Peter cared not whether the house was finished this year or next—or not at all. He enjoyed Grant’s cooking in the temporary work-shed they had built; he enjoyed Grant’s stories of funny incidents of the war which would crop out at unexpected moments, and which were always good for a new pipe and a few minutes’ rest; he even essayed certain flights of his own, which showed that Peter was a creature not entirely without humor. He developed an appreciation of scenery; he would stand for long intervals gazing across the valley. Grant was not deceived by these little devices, but he never took Peter to task for his loitering. He was prepared almost to suspend his rule that money must not be paid except for service rendered. “If the old dodger isn’t quite paying his way now, no doubt he has more than paid it many times in the past,” he mused. “This is an occasion upon which to temper justice with mercy.”
But it was in the planning and building of the house he found his real delight. He laid it out on very modest lines, as became the amount of money he was prepared to spend. It was to be a single-story bungalow, with veranda round the south and west. The living-room ran across the south side; into its east wall he built a capacious fireplace, with narrow slits of windows to right and left, and in the western wall were deep French windows commanding the magic of the view across the valley. The dining-room, too, faced to the west, with more French windows to let in sun and soul. The kitchen was to the east, and off the kitchen lay Grant’s bedroom, facing also to the east, as becomes a man who rises early for his day’s labors. And then facing the west, and opening off the dining-room, was what he was pleased to call his whim-room.
The idea of the whim-room came upon him as he was working out plans on the smooth side of a board, and thinking about things in general, and a good deal about Phyllis Bruce, and wondering if he should ever run across Zen Transley. It struck him all of a sudden, as had the Big Idea that night when he was on his way home from Murdoch’s house. He worked it out surreptitiously, not allowing even old Peter to see it until he had made it into his plan, and then he described it just as the whim-room. But it was to be by all means the best room in the house; special finishing and flooring lumber were to be bought for it; the fireplace had to be done in a peculiarly delicate tile; the French windows must be high and wide and of the most brilliant transparency....
The ring of the saw, the trill of the plane, the thwack of the hammer, were very pleasant music in his ears. Day by day he watched his dwelling grow with the infinite joy of creating, and night after night he crept with Peter into the work-shed and slept the sleep of a man tired and contented. In the long summer evenings the sunlight hung like a champagne curtain over the mountains even after bedtime, and Grant had to cut a hole in the wall of the shed that he might watch the dying colors of the day fade from crimson to purple to blue on the tassels of cloud-wraith floating in the western sky. At times Linder and Murdoch would visit him to report progress on the Big Idea, and the three would sit on a bench in the half-built house, sweet with the fragrance of new sawdust, and smoke placidly while they determined matters of policy or administration. It had been something of a disappointment to Grant that Murdoch had not considered Phyllis Bruce one of “the family.” He had left her, regretfully, in the East, but had made provision that she was still to have her room in the old Murdoch home.
“Phyllis would have come west, and gladly, if I could have promised her a position,” Murdoch explained, “but I could not do that, as I knew nothing of your plans, and a girl can’t afford to trifle with her job these days, Mr. Grant.”
And Grant said nothing, but he thought of his whim-room, and smiled.
Grant was almost sorry when the house was finished. “There’s so much more enjoyment in doing things than in merely possessing them after they’re done,” he philosophized to Linder. “I think that must be the secret of the peculiar fascination of the West. The East, with all its culture and conveniences and beauty, can never win a heart which has once known the West. That is because in the East all the obvious things are done, but in the West they are still to do.”
“You should worry,” said Linder. “You still have the plowing.”
“Yes, and as soon as the stable is finished I am going to buy four horses and get to work.”
“I supposed you would use a tractor.”
“Not this time. I can admire a piece of machinery, but I can’t love it. I can love horses.”
“You’ll be housing them in the whim-room,” Linder remarked dryly, and had to jump to escape the hammer which his chief shied at him.
But the plowing was really a great experience. Grant had an eye for horse-flesh, and the four dapple-greys which pressed their fine shoulders into the harness of his breaking plow might have delighted the heart of any teamster. As he sat on his steel seat and watched the colter cut the firm sod with brittle cracking sound as it snapped the tough roots of the wild roses, or looking back saw the regular terraces of shiny black mould which marked his progress, he felt that he was engaged in a rite of almost sacramental significance.
“To take a substance straight from the hand of the Creator and be the first in all the world to impose a human will upon it is surely an occasion for solemnity and thanksgiving,” he soliloquized. “How can anyone be so gross as to see only materialism in such work as this? Surely it has something of fundamental religion in it! Just as from the soil springs all physical life, may it not be that deep down in the soil are, some way, the roots of the spiritual? The soil feeds the city in two ways; it fills its belly with material food, and it is continually re-vitalizing its spirit with fresh streams of energy which can come only from the land. Up from the soil comes all life, all progress, all development—”
At that moment Grant’s plowshare struck a submerged boulder, and he was dumped precipitately into that element which he had been so generously apostrophizing. The well-trained horses came to a stop as he gathered himself up, none the worse, and regained his seat.
“That WAS a spill,” he commented. “Ditched not only myself, but my whole train of thought. Never mind; perhaps I was dangerously close to the development of a new whim, and I am well supplied in that particular already. Hello, whom have we here?”
The horses had come to a stop a short distance before the end of the furrow, and Grant, glancing ahead, saw immediately in front of them a little chap of four or five obstructing the way. He stood astride of the furrow with widespread legs bridging the distance from the virgin prairie to the upturned sod. He was hatless, and curls of silky yellow hair fell about his round, bright face. His hands were stuck obtrusively in his trouser pockets.
“Well, son, what’s the news?” said Grant, when the two had measured each other for a moment.
“I got braces,” the boy replied proudly. “Don’t you see?”
“Why, so you have!” Grant exclaimed. “Come around here until I see them better.”
So encouraged, the little chap came skipping around the horses, and exhibited his braces for Grant’s admiration. But he had already become interested in another subject.
“Are these your horses?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
“Will they bite?”
“Why, no, I don’t believe they would. They have been very well brought up.”
“What do you call them?”
“This one is Prince, on the left, and the others are Queen, and King, and Knave. I call him Knave because he’s always scheming, trying to get out of his share of the work, and I make him walk on the plowed land, too.”
“That serves him right,” the boy declared. “What’s your name?”
“Why—what’s yours?”
“Wilson.”
“Wilson what?”
“Just Wilson.”
“What does your mother call you?”
“Just Wilson. Sometimes daddy calls me Bill.”
“Oh!”
“What’s your name?”
“Call me The Man on the Hill.”
“Do you live on the hill?”
“Yes.”
“Is that your house?”
“Yes.”
“Did you make it?”
“Yes.”
“All yourself?”
“No. Peter helped me.”
“Who’s Peter?”
“He is the man who helped me.”
“Oh!”
These credentials exchanged, the boy fell silent, while Grant looked down upon him with a whimsical admixture of humor and tenderness. Suddenly, without a word, the boy dashed as fast as his legs could carry him to the end of the field, and plunged into a clump of bushes. In a moment he emerged with something brown and chubby in his arms.
“He’s my teddy,” he said to Grant. “He was watching in the bushes to see if you were a nice man.”
“And am I?” Grant was tempted to ask.
“Yes.” There was no evasion about Wilson. He approved of his new acquaintance, and said so.
“Let us give teddy a ride on Prince?”
“Let’s!”
Grant carefully arranged teddy on the horse’s hames, and the boy clapped his hands with delight.
“Now let us all go for a ride. You will sit on my knee, and teddy will drive Prince.”
He took the boy carefully on his knee, driving with one hand and holding him in place with the other. The little body resting confidently against his side was a new experience for Grant.
“We must drive carefully,” he remarked. “Here and there are big stones hidden in the grass. If we were to hit one it might dump us off.”
The little chap chuckled. “Nothing could dump you off,” he said.
Grant reflected that such implicit and unwarranted confidence implied a great responsibility, and he drove with corresponding care. A mishap now might nip this very delightful little bud of hero-worship.
They turned the end of the furrow with a fine jingle of loose trace-chains, and Prince trotted a little on account of being on the outer edge of the semicircle. The boy clapped his hands again as teddy bounced up and down on the great shoulders.
“Have you a little boy?” he asked, when they were started again.
“Why, no,” Grant confessed, laughing at the question.
“Why?”
There was no evading this childish inquisitor. He had a way of pursuing a subject to bedrock.
“Well, you see, I’ve no wife.”
“No mother?”
“No—no wife. You see—”
“But I have a mother—”
“Of course, and she is your daddy’s wife. You see they have to have that—”
Grant found himself getting into deep water, but the sharp little intellect had cut a corner and was now ahead of him.
“Then I’ll be your little boy,” he said, and, clambering up to Grant’s shoulder pressed a kiss on his cheek. In a sudden burst of emotion Grant brought his team to a stop and clasped the little fellow in both his arms. For a moment everything seemed misty.
“And I have lived to be thirty-two years old and have never known what this meant,” he said to himself.
“Daddy’s hardly ever home, anyway,” the boy added, naively.
“Where is your home?”
“Down beside the river. We live there in summer.”
And so the conversation continued and the acquaintanceship grew as man and boy plied back and forth on their mile-long furrow. At length it occurred to Grant that he should send Wilson home; the boy’s long absence might be occasioning some uneasiness. They stopped at the end of the field and carefully removed teddy from his place of prestige, but just at that moment a horsefly buzzing about caused Prince to stamp impatiently, and the big hoof came down on the boy’s foot. Wilson sent up a cry proportionate to the possibilities of the occasion, and Grant in alarm tore off the boot and stocking. Fortunately the soil had been soft, and the only damage done was a slight bruise across the upper part of the foot.
“There, there,” said Grant, soothingly, caressing the injury with his fingers. “It will be all right in a minute. Prince didn’t mean to do it, and besides, I’ve seen much worse than that at the war.”
At the mention of war the boy suspended a cry half uttered.
“Were you at the war?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
“Did you kill a German?”
“I’ve seen a German killed,” said Grant, evading a question which no soldier cares to discuss.
“Did you kill ‘em in the tummy?” the boy persisted.
“We’ll talk about that to-morrow. Now you hop up on to my shoulders, and I’ll tie the horses and then carry you home.”
He followed the boy’s directions until they led him to a path running among pleasant trees down by the river. Presently he caught a glimpse of a cottage in a little open space, its brown shingled walls almost smothered in a riot of sweet peas.
“That’s our house. Don’t you like it?” said the boy, who had already forgotten his injury.
“I think it is splendid.” And Grant, taking his young charge from his shoulder, stepped up on to the porch and knocked at the screen door.
In a moment it was opened by Zen Transley.
Sitting on his veranda that evening while the sun dropped low over the mountains and the sound of horses munching contentedly came up from the stables, Grant for the twentieth time turned over in his mind the events of a day that was to stand out as an epochal one in his career. The meeting with the little boy and the quick friendship and confidence which had been formed between them; the mishap, and the trip to the house by the river—these were logical and easily followed. But why, of all the houses in the world, should it have been Zen Transley’s house? Why, of all the little boys in the world, should this have been the son of his rival and the only girl he had ever—the girl he had loved most in all his life? Surely events are ordered to some purpose; surely everything is not mere haphazard chance! The fatalism of the trenches forbade any other conclusion; and if this was so, why had he been thrown into the orbit of Zen Transley? He had not sought her; he had not dreamt of her once in all that morning while her child was winding innocent tendrils of affection about his heart. And yet—how the boy had gripped him! Could it be that in some way he was a small incarnation of the Zen of the Y.D., with all her clamorous passion expressed now in childish love and hero-worship? Had some intelligence above his own guided him into this environment, deliberately inviting him to defy conventions and blaze a path of broader freedom for himself, and for her? These were questions he wrestled with as the shadows crept down the mountain slopes and along the valley at his feet.
For neither Zen nor himself had connived at the situation which had made them, of all the people in the world, near neighbors in this silent valley. Her surprise on meeting him at the door had been as genuine as his. When she had made sure that the boy was not seriously hurt she had turned to him, and instinctively he had known that there are some things which all the weight of passing years can never crush entirely dead. He loved to rehearse her words, her gestures, the quick play of sympathetic emotions as one by one he reviewed them.
“You! I am surprised—I had not known—” She had become confused in her greeting, and a color that she would have given worlds to suppress crept slowly through her cheeks.
“I am surprised, too—and delighted,” he had returned. “The little boy came to me in the field, boasting of his braces.” Then they had both laughed, and she had asked him to come in and tell about himself.
The living-room, as he recalled it, was marked by the simplicity appropriate to the summer home, with just a dash of elegance in the furnishings to suggest that simplicity was a matter of choice and not of necessity. After soothing Wilson’s sobs, which had broken out afresh in his mother’s arms, she had turned him over to a maid and drawn a chair convenient to Grant’s.
“You see, I am a farmer now,” he had said, apologetically regarding his overalls.
“What changes have come! But I don’t understand; I thought you were rich—very rich—and that you were promoting some kind of settlement scheme. Frank has spoken of it.”
“All of which is true. You see, I am a man of whims. I choose to live joyously. I refuse to fit into a ready-made niche in society. I do what other people don’t do—mainly for that reason. I have some peculiar notions—”
“I know. You told me.” And it was then that their eyes had met and they had fallen into a momentary silence.
“But why are you farming?” she had exclaimed, brightly.
“For several reasons. First, the world needs food. Food is the greatest safeguard—I would almost say the only safeguard—against anarchy and chaos. Then, I want to learn by experience; to prove by my own demonstrations that my theories are workable—or that they’re not. And then, most of all, I love the prairies and the open life. It’s my whim, and I follow it.”
“You are very wonderful,” she had murmured. And then, with startling directness, “Are you happy?”
“As happy as I have any right to be. Happier than I have been since childhood.”
She had risen and walked to the mantelpiece; then, with an apparent change of impulse, she had turned and faced him. He had noted that her figure was rounder than in girlhood, her complexion paler, but the sunlight still danced in her hair, and her reckless force had given way to a poise that suggested infinite resources of character.
“Frank has done well, too,” she had said.
“So I have heard. I am told that he has done very well indeed.”
“He has made money, and he is busy and excited over his pursuit of success—what he calls success. He has given it his life. He thinks of nothing else—”
She had stopped suddenly, as though her tongue had trapped her into saying more than she had intended.
“What do you think of my summer home?” she had exclaimed, abruptly. “Come out and admire the sweet peas,” and with a gay little flourish she had led him into the garden. “They tell me Western flowers have a brilliance and a fragrance which the East, with all its advantages, cannot duplicate. Is that true?”
“I believe it is. The East has greater profusion—more varieties—but the individual qualities do not seem to be so well developed.”
“I see you know something of Eastern flowers,” she had said, and he fancied he had caught a note of banter—or was it inquiry?—in her voice. Then, with another abrupt change of subject, she had made him describe his house on the hill. But he had said nothing of the whim-room.
“I must go,” he had exclaimed at length. “I left the horses tied in the field.”
“So you must. I shall let Wilson visit you frequently, if he is not a trouble.”
Then she had chosen a couple of blooms and pinned them on his coat, laughingly overriding his protest that they consorted poorly with his costume. And she had shaken hands and said good-bye in the manner of good friends parting.
The more Grant thought of it the more was he convinced that in her case, as in his own, the years had failed to extinguish the spark kindled in the foothills that night so long ago. He reminded himself continually that she was Transley’s wife, and even while granting the irrevocability of that fact he was demanding to know why Fate had created for them both an atmosphere charged with unspoken possibilities. He had turned her words over again and again, reflecting upon the abrupt angles her speech had taken. In their few minutes’ conversation three times she had had to make a sudden tack to safer subjects. What had she meant by that reference to Eastern and Western flowers? His answer reminded him how well he knew. And the confession about her husband, the worshipper of success—“what he calls success”—how much tragedy lay under those light words?
The valley was filled with shadow, and the level rays of the setting sun fell on the young man’s face and splashed the hill-tops with gold and saffron as within his heart raged the age-old battle.... But as yet he felt none of its wounds. He was conscious only of a wholly irrational delight.
As the next forenoon passed Grant found himself glancing with increasing frequency toward the end of the field where the little boy might be expected to appear. But the day wore on without sign of his young friend, and the furrows which he had turned so joyously at nine were dragging leadenly at eleven. He had not thought it possible that a child could so quickly have won a way to his affections. He fell to wondering as to the cause of the boy’s absence. Had Zen, after a night’s reflection, decided that it was wiser not to allow the acquaintance to develop? Had Transley, returning home, placed his veto upon it? Or—and his heart paused at this prospect—had the foot been more seriously hurt than they had supposed? Grant told himself that he must go over that night and make inquiry. That would be the neighborly thing to do....
But early that afternoon his heart was delighted by the sight of a little figure skipping joyously over the furrows toward him. He had his hat crumpled in one hand, and his teddy-bear in the other, and his face was alive with excitement. He was puffing profusely when he pulled up beside the plow, and Grant stopped the team while he got his breath.
“My! My! What is the hurry? I see the foot is all better.”
“We got a pig!” the lad gasped, when he could speak.
“A pig!”
“Yessir! A live one, too! He’s awful big. A man brought him in a wagon. That is why I couldn’t come this morning.”
Grant treated himself to a humble reflection upon the wisdom of childish preferments.
“What are you going to do with him?”
“Eat him up, I guess. Daddy said there was enough wasted about our house to keep a pig, so we got one. Aren’t you going to take me up?”
“Of course. But first we must put teddy in his place.”
“I’m to go home at five o’clock,” the boy said, when he had got properly settled.
The hours slipped by all too quickly, and if the lad’s presence did not contribute to good plowing, it at least made a cheerful plowman. It was plain that Zen had sufficient confidence in her farmer neighbor to trust her boy in his care, and his frequent references to his mother had an interest for Grant which he could not have analyzed or explained. During the afternoon the merits of the pig were sung and re-sung, and at last Wilson, after kissing his friend on the cheek and whispering, “I like you, Uncle Man-on-the-Hill,” took his teddy-bear under his arm and plodded homeward.
The next morning he came again, but mournfully and slow. There were tear stains on the little round cheeks.
“Why, son, what had happened?” said Grant, his abundant sympathies instantly responding.
“Teddy’s spoiled,” the child sobbed. “I set him—on the side of—the pig pen, and he fell’d in, and the big pig et him—ate him—up. He didn’t ‘zactly eat him up, either—just kind of chewed him, like.”
“Well that certainly is too bad. But then, you’re going to eat the pig some day, so that will square it, won’t it?”
“I guess it will,” said the boy, brightening. “I never thought of that.”
“But we must have a teddy for Prince. See, he is looking around, waiting for it.” Grant folded his coat into the shape of a dummy and set it up on the hames, and all went merrily again.
That afternoon, which was Saturday, the boy came thoughtfully and with an air of much importance. Delving into a pocket he produced an envelope, somewhat crumpled in transit. It was addressed, “The Man on the Hill.”
Grant tore it open eagerly and read this note:
“DEAR MAN-ON-THE-HILL,—That is the name Wilson calls you, so perhaps you will let me use it, too. Frank is to be home to-morrow, and will you come and have dinner with us at six? My father and mother will be here, and possibly one or two others. You had a clash with my men-folk once, but you will find them ready enough to make allowance for, even if they fail to understand, your point of view. Do come.—ZEN.
“P.S.—It just occurs to me that your associates in your colonization scheme may want to claim your time on Sunday. If any of them come out, bring them along. Our table is an extension one, and its capacity has never yet been exhausted.”
Although Grant’s decision was made at once he took some time for reflection before writing an acceptance. He was to enter Zen’s house on her invitation, but under the auspices, so to speak, of husband and parents. That was eminently proper. Zen was a sensible girl. Then there was a reference to that ancient squabble in the hay meadow. It was evidently her plan to see the hatchet buried and friendly relations established all around. Eminently proper and sensible.
He turned the sheet over and wrote on the back:
“DEAR ZEN,—Delighted to come. May have a couple of friends with me, one of whom you have seen before. Prepare for an appetite long denied the joys of home cooking.—D. G.”
It was not until after the child had gone home that Grant remembered he had addressed Transley’s wife by her Christian name. That was the way he always thought of her, and it slipped on to paper quite naturally. Well, it couldn’t be helped now.
Grant unhitched early and hurried to his house and the telephone. In a few minutes he had Linder on the line.
“Hello, Linder? I want you to go to a store for me and buy a teddy-bear.”
The chuckle at the other end of the line irritated Grant. Linder had a strange sense of humor.
“I mean it. A big teddy, with electric eyes, and a deep bass growl, if they make ‘em that way. The best you can get. Fetch it out to-morrow afternoon, and come decently dressed, for once. Bring Murdoch along if you can pry him loose.”
Grant hung up the receiver. “Stupid chap, Linder, some ways,” he muttered. “Why shouldn’t I buy a teddy-bear if I want to?”
Sunday afternoon saw the arrival of Linder and Murdoch, with the largest teddy the town afforded. “What is the big idea now?” Linder demanded, as he delivered it into Grant’s hands.
“It is for a little boy I know who has been bereaved of his first teddy by the activities of the family pig. You will renew some pleasant acquaintanceships, Linder. You remember Transley and his wife—Zen, of the Y.D?”
“You don’t say! Thanks for that tip about dressing up. I may explain,” Linder continued, turning to Murdoch, “there was a time when I might have been an also-ran in the race for Y.D.‘s daughter, only Transley beat me on the getaway.”
“You!” Grant exclaimed, incredulously.
“You, too!” Linder returned, a great light dawning.
“Well, Mr. Grant,” said Murdoch, “I brought you a good cigar, bought at the company’s expense. It comes out of the organization fund. You must be sick of those cheap cigars.”
“Since the war it is nothing but Player’s,” Grant returned, taking the proffered cigar. “They tell me it has revolutionized the tobacco business. However, this does smell a bit all right. How goes our venture, Murdoch? Have I any prospect of being impoverished in a worthy cause?”
“None whatever. Your foreman here is spending every dollar in a way to make you two in spite of your daft notion—begging your pardon, sir—about not taking profits. The subscribers are coming along for stock, but fingering it gently, as though they can’t well believe there’s no catch in it. They say it doesn’t look reasonable, and I tell them no more it is.”
“And then they buy it?”
“Aye, they do. That’s human nature. There’s as many members booked now as can be accommodated in the first colony. I suppose they reason that they will be sure of their winter’s housing, anyway.”
“You don’t seem to have much faith in human nature, Murdoch.”
“Nor have I. Not in that kind of human nature which is always wanting something for nothing.”
Linder’s report was more cheerful. The houses and barns were built and were now being painted, the plowing was done, and the fences were being run. By the use of a triangular system of survey twelve farm homes had been centralized in one little community where a community building would be erected which would be used as a school in daytime, a motion-picture house at night, and a church on Sunday. A community secretary would have his office here, and would have charge of a select little library of fiction, poetry, biography, and works of reference. The leading periodicals dealing with farm problems, sociology, and economics, as well as lighter subjects, would be on file. In connection with this building would be an assembly-room suitable for dances, social events, and theatricals, and equipped with a player piano and concert-size talking machine. Arrangements were being made for a weekly exchange of records, for a weekly musical evening by artists from the city, for a semi-monthly vaudeville show, and for Sunday meetings addressed by the best speakers on the more serious topics of the time.
“What has surprised me in making these arrangements,” Linder confessed, “is the comparatively small outlay they involve. The building will cost no more than many communities spend on school and church which they use thirty hours a week and three hours a week respectively. This one can be used one hundred and sixty-eight hours a week, if needed. Lecturers on many subjects can be had for paying their expenses; in some cases they are employed by the Government, and will come without cost. Amateur theatrical companies from the city will be glad to come in return for an appreciative audience and a dance afterward, with a good fill-up on solid farm cooking. Even some of the professionals can be had on these terms. Of course, before long we will produce our own theatricals.
“Then there is to be a plunge bath big enough to swim in, open to men and women alternate nights, and to children every day. There will be a pool-room, card-room, and refreshment buffet; also a quiet little room for women’s social events, and an emergency hospital ward. I think we should hire a trained nurse who would not be too dignified to cook and serve meals when there’s no business doing in the hospital. You know how everyone gets hankering now and then for a meal from home,—not that it’s any better, but it’s different. I suppose there are farmer’s wives who don’t get a meal away from home once a year. I’m going to change all that, if I have to turn cook myself!”
“Bully for you, Linder!” said Grant, clapping him on the shoulder. “I believe you actually are enthusiastic for once.”
“I understand my orders are to make the country give the city a run for its money, and I’m going to do it, or break you. If all I’ve mentioned won’t do it I’ve another great scheme in storage.”
“Good! What is it?”
“I am inventing a machine that will make a noise like a trolley-car and a smell like a sewer. That will add the last touch in city refinements.”
When the laugh over Linder’s invention had subsided Murdoch broached another.
“The office work is becoming pretty heavy, Mr. Grant, and I’m none too confident in the help I have. Now if I could send for Miss Bruce—”
“What do you think you should pay her?”
“I should say she is worth a hundred dollars a month.”
“Then she must be worth two hundred. Wire her to come and start her at that figure.”