, here and there, upon the hills.

"It doesn't seem very attractive until you consider those houses,"
Bobby confessed. "You must remember that the city hasn't room to grow,
and must take note that it is trying to spread in this direction.
Wouldn't a fellow be doing a rather public-spirited thing, and one in
which he might take quite a bit of satisfaction, if he drained that
swamp, filled it, laid out streets and turned the whole stretch into a
cluster of homes in place of a breeding-place for fevers?"

"You talk just like a civic improvement society," she said, laughing.

"We did have a chap lecturing on that down at the club a few nights
ago," he admitted, "and maybe I have picked up a bit of the talk. But
wouldn't it be a good thing, anyhow?"

"Oh, I quite approve of it, now that I see your plan," she agreed;
"but could it be made to pay?"

"Well," he returned with a grave assumption of that businesslike air
he had recently been trying to copy down at the Traders' Club, "there
are one hundred and twenty acres in the tract. I can buy it for two
hundred dollars an acre, and sell each acre, in building lots, for
full six hundred. It seems to me that this is enough margin to carry
out the needed improvements and make the marketing of it worth while.
What do you think of it?"

They both gazed out over that desolate expanse and tried to picture it
dotted with comfortable cottages, set down in grassy lawns that
bordered on white, clean streets, and the idea of the transformation
was an attractive one.

"It looks to me like a perfectly splendid idea," Agnes admitted. "I
wonder what your father would have thought of it."

"Well," confessed Bobby a trifle reluctantly, "this very proposition
was presented to him several times, I believe, but he always declined
to go into it."

"Then," decided Agnes, so quickly and emphatically that it startled
him, "don't touch it!"

"Oh, but you see," he reminded her, "the governor couldn't go into
everything that was offered him, and to this plan he never urged any
objection but that he had too many irons in the fire."

"I wouldn't touch it," declared Agnes, and that was her final word in
the matter, despite all his arguments. If John Burnit had declined to
go into it, no matter for what reason, the plan was not worth
considering.

CHAPTER VIII

BOBBY SUCCEEDS IN SNAPPING A BARGAIN FROM UNDER SILAS TRIMMER'S NOSE

Still undecided, but carrying seriously the thought th