eyes fairly devoured the scene spread out before him
against the background of Paradise Ridge.

"If you don't like it we can get rid of it," I said, as I poured his
drink over the ice tinkling against the side of the glass.

"Not like it!" exclaimed Nickols, as he rose with the spoonful of
dumplings dashed back into the plate. "That is the most wonderful and
beautiful landscape effect I have ever beheld. That is just what our
garden needed. I suppose I would have seen it and put some sort of a
pavilion there, but that squat and perfect old church would have been
beyond me."

"Oh, I'm glad!" I exclaimed, as he sank back on the step beside me, took
the glass from my hand, drank deeply and this time began a determined
attack upon the plate in his hand. And then as he ate I told him all
about father and his plans for the garden and his own improvement and to
what I hoped the work was leading him. But somehow I couldn't bring
myself to describe the scene which had that night been enacted in the
garden--I couldn't. "Oh, I am so glad you are not furious and will maybe
be willing to encourage him, even if it does mean to encourage the
Methodist Church and the minister thereof. You are wonderful, Nickols,"
I finished with a squeeze of his arm that very nearly jostled the cream
out of the spoon upon his gray tweed trousers.

"I'd be a wonderful ass not to take advantage of Judge Nickols Powers'
brain and money, plus Gregory Goodloe's brain and training and money
combined, to get a result that will be worth a hundred thousand dollars
to me and all the fame I can conveniently wear. Encourage 'em? Just
watch me! Only what the judge thinks will take two years can be done in
one season if we get experts down to do it, which we will. Trees two
hundred years old _can_ be moved for a few thousand dollars, as well as
plants in bloom that would require years to transplant. I know the man
to do it: Wilkerson of White Plains. I'll telegraph him in the
morning."

"He won't interfere with--with father, will he?" I asked anxiously.

"Not a bit--he'll just make what the judge and Gregory plan for year
after next, grow and bloom there in a couple of months. Wilkerson is not
a creator, he's just nature keyed up to the _n_th power. And also I'll
give him for a bait the Jeffries estate I was hesitating about making a
bid for. All the big fellows are after it. Old man Jeffries has made two
barrels of money in the last ten years in oil and he i