who for upward of thirty years had been his father’s right and left bowers. “What am I to do with it? Johnson, what would you do with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”
“Lose it,” confessed stooped and bloodless Johnson. “I never made a dollar out of a dollar in my life.”
“What would you do with it, Applerod?”
Mr. Applerod, scarcely able to contain himself, had been eagerly awaiting that question.
“Purchase, improve and market the Westmarsh Addition,” he said promptly, expanding fully two inches across his already rotund chest.
“What?” snorted Johnson, and cast upon his workmate a look of withering scorn. “Are you still dreaming about the possibilities of that old swamp?”
“To be sure it is a swamp,” admitted Mr. Applerod with some heat. “Do you suppose you could buy one hundred and twenty acres of directly accessible land, almost at the very edge of the crowded city limits, at two hundred dollars an acre if it wasn’t swamp land?” he demanded. “Why, Mr. Burnit, it is the opportunity of a lifetime!”
“How much capital would be needed?” asked Bobby, gravely assuming the callous, inquisitorial manner of the ideal business man.
“Well, I’ve managed to buy up twenty acres out of my savings, and there are still one hundred acres to be purchased, which will take twenty thousand dollars. But this is the small part of it. Drainage, filling and grading is to be done, streets and sidewalks ought to be put down, a gift club-house, which would serve at first as an office, would be a good thing to build, and the thing would have to be most thoroughly advertised. I’ve figured on it for years, and it would require, all told, about a two-hundred-thousand investment.”
“And what would be the return?” asked Bobby without blinking at these big figures, and proud of his attitude, which, while conservative, was still one of openness to conviction.
“Figure it out for yourself,” Mr. Applerod invited him with much enthusiasm. “We get ten building lots to the acre, turning one hundred and twenty acres into one thousand two hundred lots. Improved sites at any point surrounding this tract can not be bought for less than twenty-five dollars per front foot. Corner lots and those in the best locations would bring much more, but taking the average price at only six hundred dollars per lot, we would have, as a total return for the investment, seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars!”
“In how long?” Bobby inquired, not allowing himself to become in the slightest degree excited.
“One year,” announced the optimistic Mr. Applerod with conviction.
Mr. Johnson, his lips glued tightly together in one firm, thin, straight line across his face, was glaring steadfastly at the corner of the ceiling, permitting no expression whatever to flicker in his eyes; noting which, Bobby turned to him with a point-blank question:
“What do you think of this opportunity, Mr. Johnson?” he asked.
Mr. Johnson glared quickly at Mr. Applerod.
“Tell him,” defied that gentleman.
“I think nothing whatever of it!” snapped Mr. Johnson.
“What is your chief ground of objection?” Bobby wanted to know.
Again Mr. Johnson glared quickly at Mr. Applerod.
“Tell him,” insisted that gentleman with an outward wave of both hands, expressive of his intense desire to have every secret of his own soul and of everybody’s else laid bare.
“I will,” said Johnson. “Your father, a dozen times in my own hearing, refused to have anything to do with the scheme.”
Bobby turned accusing eyes upon Applerod, who, though red of face, was still strong of assertion.
“Mr. Burnit never declined on any other grounds than that he already had too many irons in the fire,” he declared. “Tell him that, too, Johnson!”
“It was only his polite way of putting it,” retorted Mr. Johnson.
“John Burnit was noted for his polite way of putting his business conclusions,” snapped Applerod in return, whereat Bobby smiled with gleeful reminiscence, and Mr. Johnson smiled grimly, albeit reluctantly, and Mr. Applerod smiled triumphantly.
“I can see the governor doing it,” laughed Bobby, and dismissed the matter. “Mr. Johnson, as a start in business we may as well turn this study into a temporary office. Take this check down to the Commercial Bank, please, and open an account. You already have power of attorney for my signature. Procure a small set of books and open them. Make out for me against this account at the Commercial a check for ten thousand. Mr. Applerod, kindly reduce your swamp proposition to paper and let me have it by to-morrow. I’ll not promise that I will do anything with it, but it would be only fair to examine it.”
With these crisp remarks, upon the decisiveness of which Bobby prided himself very much, he left the two to open business for him under the supervision of the portrait of stern but humor-given old John Burnit.
“Applerod,” said Johnson indignantly, his lean frame almost quivering, “it is a wonder to me that you can look up at that picture and reflect that you are trying to drag John Burnit’s son into this fool scheme.”
“Johnson,” said Mr. Applerod, puffing out his cheeks indignantly, “you were given the first chance to advise Mr. Robert what he should do with his money, and you failed to do so. This is a magnificent business opportunity, and I should consider myself very remiss in my duty to John Burnit’s son if I failed to urge it upon him.”
Mr. Johnson picked up the letter that Bobby, evidently not caring whether they read it or not, had left behind him. He ran through it with a grim smile and handed it over to Applerod as his best retort.
At the home of Agnes Elliston Bobby’s car stopped almost as a matter of habit, and though the hour was a most informal one he walked up the steps as confidently as if he intended opening the door with a latch-key; for since Agnes was become his trustee, Bobby had awakened, overnight, to the fact that he had a proprietary interest in her which could not be denied.
Agnes came down to meet him in a most ravishing morning robe of pale green, a confection so stunning in conjunction with her gold-brown eyes and waving brown hair and round white throat that Bobby was forced to audible comment upon it.
“Cracking!” said he. “I suppose that if I hadn’t had nerve enough to pop in here unexpectedly before noon I wouldn’t have seen that gown for ages.”
It was Aunt Constance, the irrepressible, who, leaning over the stair railing, sank the iron deep into his soul.
“It was bought at Trimmer and Company’s, Grand Street side, Bobby,” she informed him, and with this Parthian shot she went back through the up-stairs hall, laughing.
“Ouch!” said Bobby. “That was snowballing a cripple,” and he was really most woebegone about it.
“Never mind, Bobby, you have still plenty of chance to win,” comforted Agnes, who, though laughing, had sympathetic inkling of that sore spot which had been touched. He seemed so forlorn, in spite of his big, good-natured self, that she moved closer to him and unconsciously put her hand upon his arm. It was too much for him in view of the way she looked, and, suddenly emboldened, he did a thing the mere thought of which, under premeditation, would have scared
