beside
Cathcart along the edge of the lawn, his hands in his pockets, lifting
friendly eyes at the little house. "Since we put in the bathroom--that
small room off the upper hall, you know--and added the nursery and den,
we're very comfortable. The furnace keeps us warm as toast, and we're soon
to have the water system out here, so we won't have to depend upon our
present expedients. I'm fond of the place, and I'm confident Mrs. Robeson
is devoted to it."

"I can understand that," agreed Cathcart. "Of course, the spot where you
began life together will always have its charm for you both--in fact the
sentiment of the matter may blind you to the real inadequacies of the
place for a man in your position."

"My position isn't so stable that I want to build a marble palace on it
yet," said Anthony, a humorous twinkle in his eye. He enjoyed watching
another man manoeuvre for his favourable hearing of a scheme. It was an
art in which he was himself accomplished; it was one of the points of his
value to Henderson and Henderson.

"Everybody knows that you're in a fair way to become head man with the
Hendersons," said Cathcart, "and everybody also knows that you might as
well have struck a gold-mine. It's superb, the way you have come into the
confidence of those old conservatives."

"That's all well enough; but I don't see that it entails upon me the duty
of laying out all I've saved on a new house. I know what you fellows
are--when you begin to draw plans your love of the ideal runs away with
the other man's pocketbook."

"Not at all," declared Cathcart. "Particularly when he's a friend and you
understand just what he can afford to do."

"Why don't you talk about enlarging the old house? That's much more likely
to appeal to my desires."

The two had reached the back of the house and were close by the kitchen
windows. Cathcart reached up and took hold of a sill. With a strong hand
he wrenched and pounded about the window, until he succeeded in showing
that it was old and uncertain.

"That's why," he said, dusting his hand with his handkerchief. "The house
is old--fairly rotten in places. The minute you began to enlarge it in any
ambitious way you'd find it would be cheaper to tear it down and begin
again. But the site, Robeson--the site isn't desirable. The place is
respectable enough, but it has no future. The good building is all going
south, not north, of the city. You don't want to spend a lot of money
here--you co