The Early Bird: A Business Man's Love Story

by George Randolph Chester

[Illustration: "Excuse me!" stammered Mr. Stevens.]

It was Miss Josephine who first found her aplomb. She smiled her rare smile of mingled amusement and mischief at Sam, and then at her father.

"You're quite excusable, I guess, father," she said sweetly. "What is it?"

"Why, your brother Jack just called you up from Meadow Brook, Sam, and wants to tell you something immediately," stammered Mr. Stevens, plucking at a beard which in that moment seemed to have lost all its aggressiveness. "He called twice before you arrived, and is on the 'phone now."

Sam, as he walked to the telephone, had time to find that his heart was beating a tattoo against his ribs, that his breath was short and fluttery, and that stage fright had suddenly crept over him and claimed him for its own; so it was with no great patience or understanding that he heard Jack tell him in great glee about some tests which Princeman had had made in his own paper mills with the marsh pulp, and how Princeman was sorry he had not taken more stock, and could not the treasury stock be opened for further subscription? "Tell him no," said Sam shortly, and hung up the receiver; then he repented of his bluntness and spent five precious minutes in recalling his brother and apologizing for his bruskness, explaining that Princeman was probably trying to plan another attempt to pool the stock.

In the meantime Theophilus Stevens had stood surveying his daughter in contrition.

"I'm afraid I came in at a most inopportune moment," he said by way of apology.

"Yes, I'm afraid you did," she admitted with a smile. "However, I don't think Sam will forget what he wanted to say," and suddenly she reached up and put her arms around her father's neck and drew his face down and kissed him rapturously.

"I'm glad to see you feel the way you do about it," said Mr. Stevens delightedly, petting her gently upon the shoulder with one hand and with the other smoothing back the hair from her forehead. She was the dearest to him of all his children, although he never confessed it, even to himself, and just now they were very, very close together indeed. "I'm glad to hear you call him Sam, too. He's a fine young man and he is bound to be a howling success in everything he undertakes." He smiled reminiscently. "I rather thought there was something between you two," he went on, still patting her shoulder, "and when Dan Westlake told me that his girl thought a great deal of Sam and that he was going to buy enough stock in Sam's company to give Sam control, I turned right around and bought just as much stock as Westlake had, although just before the meeting I had refused to invest as much money as Sam wanted me to. Moreover, Westlake and myself, between us, stopped the move to pool the outside stock, just yet. He's a smart young man, that boy," he continued admiringly. "I didn't see, until I went into that meeting, why he was so crazy to have me buy enough stock to gain control— What's the matter?"

He stopped in perplexity, for his daughter, looking aghast at him, had pushed back from his embrace and was regarding him with perfectly round eyes, while over her face, at first pale, there gradually crept a crimson flush.

"Well, of all things!" she gasped. "Of all the cold-blooded, cruel, barter-and-sale proceedings! Why, father, how—how could you! How could he! I never in all my life—"

"Why, Jo, what do you mean? What's the trouble?"

"If you don't understand I can't make you," she said helplessly.

"Well, I'll be—busted!" observed Mr. Stevens under his breath.

To his infinite relief Sam came in just then, and Mr. Stevens, wondering what he had done now, slipped hastily out of the room. Mr. Turner, coming from the bright office into the dim room and innocent of any change in the atmosphere, approached confidently and eagerly to Miss Josephine with both hands extended, but she stepped back most indignantly.

"You need not finish what you were going to say!" she warned him. "My father has just given me some information which changes the entire aspect of affairs. I am not a part of a business bargain! I refuse to be regarded as a commercial proposition! I heard something from Mr. Princeman of what desperate efforts you were making to secure the command, whatever that may be, of the—of the stock—board—of shares in your new company, but I did not think you would go to such lengths as this!"

"Why, my dear girl," began Sam, shocked.

"I am not your dear girl and I never shall be," she told him, and angrily dabbed at some sudden tears. "I never was. I was only a business possibility."

"That's unjust," he charged her. "I don't see how you could accuse me of regarding you in any other way than as the dearest and the sweetest and the most beautiful girl in all the world, the wisest and the most sensible, the most faithful, the most charming, the most delightful, the most everything that is desirable."

"Wait just a moment," she told him, very coldly indeed; with almost extravagant coldness, in fact, as she beat out of her consciousness the enticing epithets he had bestowed upon her. "Do you mean to say that never in your calculations did you consider that if you married me my father would vote his stock with yours—I believe that's the way he puts it—and give you command or whatever it is of your company?"

"Well," considered Sam, brought to a standstill and put straight upon his honor, "I can't deny that it did seem to me a very satisfactory thing that my father-in-law should own enough stock in the company—"

"That will do," she interrupted him icily. "That is precisely what I have charged. We will consider this subject as ended, Mr. Turner; as one never to be referred to again."

"We'll do nothing of the sort," returned Sam flat-footedly. "I've been composing this speech for the last two weeks and I'm going to deliver it. I'm not going to have it wasted. I've unconsciously been rehearsing it every place I went. Even up in Flatbush, showing a man the superior advantages of that yellow-mud district, I found myself repeating sentence number twelve. It's been the first thing I thought of in the morning and the last thing I thought of at night. It's been with me all day, riding and walking and talking and eating and drinking and just breathing. Now I'm going to go through with it.

"I—I—confound it all! I've forgotten how I was going to say it now! After all, though, it only amounted to this: I love you! I want you to know it and understand it. I love you and love you and love you! I never loved any woman before in my life. I never had time. I didn't know what it was like. If I had I'd have fought it off until I met you, because I could not afford it for anybody short of you. It takes my whole attention. It distracts my mind entirely from other things. I can't think of anything else consecutively and connectedly. I—I'm sorry you take the attitude you do about this thing, but—I'm not going to accept your viewpoint. You've got to look at this thing differently to understand it.

"I know you've been glad I loved you. You were glad the first day we met, and you always will be glad! Whatever you have to say about it just now don't count. I'm going to let you alone a while to think it over, and then I'm coming back to tell you more about it," and with that Sam stalked from the room, leaving Miss Josephine Stevens gasping, dazed, quite sure that he was unforgivable, indignant with everything, still rankling, in spite of all Sam had said, with the thought that she had been made a mere part of a commercial transaction. Why, it was like those barbarous countries she had read about, where wives are bought and sold! Preposterous and unbearable!

While she was in this storm of mixed emotions her father came in upon her, this time seriously perplexed.

"What has happened to Sam Turner?" he demanded. "He slammed out of the house, passed me on the porch with only a grunt, and jumped into his automobile. You must have done something to anger him."

"I hope that I did!" she retorted with spirit. "I refused to marry him."

"You did!" he returned in surprise. "Why, I thought it was all cut and dried between you."

"It was until you blundered into us and spoiled everything," she charged. "But I'm glad you did. You let me know that Sam Turner wanted to marry me because you had bought shares enough in his company to give him the advantage. I'm ashamed of you and ashamed of Sam—of Mr. Turner—and ashamed of myself. Why, you make a bargain-counter remnant of me! I never, never was so humiliated!"

"Poor child!" her father blandly sympathized. "Also, poor Sam. By the way, though, he doesn't need you to secure control of his company. Dan Westlake, as I told you, has bought enough stock to do the work, and Miss Westlake would marry him in a minute. If Sam wants control of his company, he only has to go to her and say the word."

"Father!" exclaimed his daughter with stern indignation. "I don't see how you can even suggest that!"

"Suggest what? Now, what have I said?"

"That Sam—that Mr. Turner would even dream of marrying that Westlake girl, just in order to get the better of a business transaction," and very much to Theophilus Stevens' surprise and consternation and dismay, she suddenly crumpled up in a heap in her chair and burst out crying.

"Well, I'll be busted!" her father muttered into his beard.

CHAPTER XVII

SHE CALLS HIM SAM!

Miss Josephine, finding all ordinary occupations stale, unprofitable and wearisome on the following morning, and finding herself, moreover, possessed of a restless spirit which urged her to do something or other and yet recoiled at each suggestion she made it, started out quite aimlessly to walk by herself. She walked in the direction of Meadow Brook. The paths in that direction were so much prettier.

Sam Turner, finding all other occupations stale, unprofitable and wearisome, at the same moment started out to walk by himself, going in the direction of Hollis Creek because that was the exact direction in which he wanted to go. As he walked much more rapidly than Miss Stevens, he arrived midway of the distance before she did, but at the valley where the unnamed stream came rippling down he paused.

He had looked often at this little hollow as he had passed it, and every time he had looked upon it he seemed to have an idea of some sort in the back of his head regarding it; a dim, unformed, fugitive sort of idea which had never asserted itself very prominently because he had been too busy to listen to its rather timid voice.

Just now, however, the idea suddenly struggled to make itself loudly known, whereupon Sam bade it come forth. Given hearing it proved to be a very pleasant idea, and a forceful one as well; so much so that it even checked the speed with which Sam had set out for Hollis Creek. He looked calculatingly across the road to where the little stream went flashing from under its wooden bridge across the field and hid around a curve behind some bushes, then reappeared, dancing in the sunlight, until finally it plunged among some far trees and was lost to him. He gazed up the stream. He had not very far to look, for there it ran down between two quite steep hills, through a sort of pocket valley, closed or almost closed, at the upper end, by another hill equally steep, its waters being augmented by a leaping little stream from a strong spring hidden away somewhere in the hill to the left.

As his eyes calculatingly swept stream and hills, they suddenly caught a flutter of white through the trees, and it was coming down the winding path which led across the hills to Hollis Creek. As it emerged more from the concealment of the leaves his blood gave a leap, for the flutter of white was a gown inclosing the unmistakable figure of Miss Josephine Stevens. The whole valley suddenly seemed radiant.

"Hello!" he called to her as she approached. "I didn't expect to find you here."

"I did not expect to be here," she laughed. "I just started out for a stroll and happened to land in this beautiful spot."

"Beautiful is no name for it," he replied with sudden vast enthusiasm, and ran up the path to help her down over a steep place.

For a moment, in the wonderful mystery of the touch of her hand and the joy of her presence, he forgot everything else. What was this strange phenomenon, by which the mere presence of one particular person filled all the air with a tingling glow? Marvelous, that's what it was! If Miss Josephine had any of the same wonder she was extremely careful not to express it, nor let it show, especially after yesterday's conversation, so she immediately talked of other things; and the first thing which came handy was another reference to the beautiful valley.

"You know, it is a wonder to me," she said, "that no one has built a summer resort here. I think it ever so much more charming than either Hollis Creek or Meadow Brook."

"Do you believe in telepathy?" asked Sam, almost startled. "I do. It hasn't been but a few minutes since that identical idea popped into my head, and I had just now decided that if I could secure options on this property I would have a real summer resort here—one that would make Hollis Creek and Meadow Brook mere farm boarding-houses. Do you see how close together these hills draw at their feet? The hollow is at least a thousand feet across at the widest part, but down there at the road, where the stream emerges to the fields, they close in with natural buttresses, as it were, to not over a hundred feet in width. Well, right across there we'll build a dam, and there is enough water here to make a beautiful lake up as high as that yellow rock."

Miss Josephine looked up at the yellow rock and clasped her hands with an exclamation of delight.

"Glorious!" she said. "I never would have thought of that; and how beautiful it will be! Why, if the lake comes up that high it will go clear back around that turn in the valley, won't it?"

"Easily," he replied; "although that might make us trouble, for I don't know where that turn in the valley leads. I have never explored that region. Suppose we go up and look it over."

"Won't that be fun?" she agreed, and they started to follow the stream.

As they reached the rear of the "pocket," where they could see around the curve, they turned and looked back over the route they had just traversed.

"My idea," Sam explained, having waited until they reached this viewpoint to do so, "is to build the dam down there at the roadside, and build the hotel right over it so that arriving guests will, after an elevator has brought them up to the height of the main floor, find the blue of the lake suddenly bursting upon them from the main piazza, which will face the valley. All of the inside rooms will, of course, have hanging balconies looking out over the water."

"Perfectly ideal!" she agreed, her enthusiasm growing.

"I think I'd better investigate the curve of the valley," he decided, studying the path carefully. "It seems rather rough for you, and I'll go alone. All I want to see is how far the water height will carry around there, and if it will become necessary to build a dam at the other end."

"Oh, it isn't too rough for me," she declared immediately. "I am an excellent climber," and together they started to explore the now narrowing valley, following the stream over steep rocks and fallen trees, and pushing through tangled undergrowth and among briers and bushes and around slippery banks until they came to another tortuous turn, where a second spring, welling up from under a flat, overhanging rock, tumbled down to augment the supply for the future lake; and here they stopped and had a drink of the cool, delicious water, Sam making the girl a cup from a huge leaf which she said made the water taste fuzzy, and then showing her how to get down on her hands and knees—spreading his coat on the ground to protect her gown—and drink au naturel, a trick at which she was most charming, and probably knew it.

The valley here had grown most narrow, but they followed the now very small stream around one sharp curve after another until they found its source, which was still another spring, and here there was no more valley; but a cleft in the hill to the right, which they suddenly came upon, gave them an exquisite view out over the beautiful low-lying country, miles in extent, which lay between this and the next range of hills; a delightful vista dotted with green farms and white farm-houses and smiling streams and waving trees and grazing cattle. They stopped in awe at the beauty of it and looked out over the valley in silence; and unconsciously the girl slipped her hand within the arm of the man!

"Just imagine a sunset out over there," he said. "You see those fleecy clouds that are out there now. If clouds like those are still there when the sun goes down, they will be a fleet of pearl-gray vessels, with carmine keels, upon a sea of gold."

She glanced at him quickly, but she did not express her marvel that this man had so many sides. Before she could comment, and while she was still framing some way to express her appreciation of his gentler gifts, he returned briskly to practical things.

"Our lake will scarcely come up to this point," he judged. "I don't think that at any point it will be high enough to cover the springs. We don't want it to if we can help it, for that would destroy some of the beauty of it. Have you noticed that our lake will be much like a kite in shape, with this winding ravine the tail of it. We'll have to take in a lot of acreage to cover this property, but it will be worth it. I'm going to look after options right away. I'm glad now I had already decided to stay another two weeks."

Of course she was still angry with Sam, she reminded herself, but she was inexpressibly glad, somehow or other, to find that he was intending to stay two weeks longer, and was startled as she recognized that fact.

"It will take a lot of money, won't it, to build a hotel here?" she asked, getting away from certain troublesome thoughts as quickly as she could.

"Yes, it will take a great deal," he admitted, as they turned to scramble down the ravine again. "I should judge, however, that about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars would finance it."

"But I thought, from something father once said, that you did not have so much money as that?"

"Bless you, no!" replied Sam, smiling. "No indeed! I've enough to cover an option on this property and that's about all, now, since I'm tangled up so deeply with my Pulp Company, but I figure that I can make a quick turn on this property to help me out on the other thing. What I'll do," he explained, "is to get this option first of all, and then have some plans drawn, including a nice perspective view of the hotel—a water-color sketch, you know, showing the building fronting the lake—and upon that build a prospectus to get up the stock company. I'll take stock for my control of the land and for my services in promotion. Then I'll sell my stock and get out. I ought to make the turn in two or three months and come out fifteen, or possibly twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars to the good. It is a nice, big scheme."

"Oh," she said blankly, "then you wouldn't actually build a hotel yourself?"

"Hardly," he returned. "I'll be content to make the profit out of promoting it that I'd make in the first four or five years of running the place."

"I see," she said musingly; "and you'd get this up just like you formed your Marsh Pulp Company, I think father called it, and of course you'd try to get—what is it?—oh, yes; control."

He smiled at her.

"I'd scarcely look for that in this deal," he explained. "If I can just get a nice slice of promotion stock and sell it I shall be quite well satisfied."

She bent puzzled brows over this new problem.

"I don't quite understand how you can do it," she confessed, "but of course you know how. You're used to these things. Father says you're very good at promoting."

"That's the way I've made all my money, or rather what little I have," he told her, modestly enough. "I expect this Pulp Company, however, to lift me out of that, for a few years at least; then when I come back into the promoting field I can go after things on a big scale. The Pulp Company ought to make me a lot of money if I can just keep it in my own hands," and involuntarily he sighed.

She looked at him musingly for a moment, and was about to say something, but thought better of it and said something else.

"The tail of your kite will be almost a perfect letter 'S'," she observed. "How beautiful it will be; the big, broad lake out there in the main valley, and then the nice, little, secluded, twisty waterway back in through here; a regular lover's lane of a waterway, as it were. I don't suppose these springs have any names. They must be named, and—why, we haven't even named the lake!"

"Yes, we have," he quickly returned. "I'm going to call it Lake Josephine."

"You haven't asked my permission for that," she objected with mock severity.

"There are plenty of Josephines in the world," he calmly observed. "Nobody has a copyright on the name, you know."

She smiled, as one sure of her ground.

"Yes, but you wouldn't call it that, if I were to object seriously."

"No, I guess I wouldn't," he gave up; "but you're not going to object seriously, are you?"

"I'll think it over," she said.

They were now making their way along a bank that was too difficult of travel to allow much conversation, though it did allow some delicious helping, but when they came out into the main valley where they could again look down on the road, they paused to survey the course over which they had just come, and to appreciate to the full the beauty of Sam's plan.

"I don't believe I quite like your idea of the hotel built down there at the roadside," she objected as they sat on a huge boulder to rest. "It cuts off the view of the lake from passers-by, and I should think it would be the best advertisement you could have for everybody who drove past there to say: 'Oh, what a pretty place!' Now I should think that right about here where we are sitting would be the proper location for your hotel. Just think how the lake and the building would look from the road. Right here would be a broad porch jutting out over the water, giving a view down that first bend of the kite tail, and back of the hotel would be this big hill and all the trees, and hills and trees would spread out each side of it, sort of open armed, as it were, welcoming people in."

"It couldn't be seen, though," objected Sam. "The dam down there would necessarily be about thirty feet high at the center, and people driving along the roadway would not be able to see the water at all. They would only see the blank wall of the dam. Of course we could soften that by building the dam back a few feet from the roadway, making an embankment and covering that with turf, or possibly shrubbery or flowers, but still the water would not be visible, nor the hotel!"

"I see," she said slowly.

They both studied that objection in silence for quite a little while. Then she suddenly and excitedly ejaculated:

"Sam!"

He jumped, and he thrilled all through. She had called him Sam entirely unconsciously, which showed that she had been thinking of him by that familiar name. With the exclamation had come sparkling eyes and heightened color, not due to having used the word, but due to a bright thought, and he almost lost his sense of logic in considering the delightful combination. It occurred to him, however, that it would be very unwise for him to call attention to her slip of the tongue, or even to give her time to think and recognize it herself.

"Another idea?" he asked.

"Indeed yes," she asserted, "and this time I know it's feasible. I don't know much about measurements in feet and inches, but there are three feet in a yard."

"Yes."

"Well, doesn't the road down there, from hill to hill, dip about ten yards?"

"Yes."

"Well then, that's thirty feet, just as high as you say the dam will have to be. Why not raise the road itself thirty feet, letting it be level and just as high as your dam?"

Sam rose and solemnly shook hands with her.

"You must come into the firm," he declared. "That solves the entire problem. We'll run a culvert underneath there to the fields. The road will reinforce the dam and the edge of the dam will be entirely concealed. It will be merely a retaining wall with a nice stone coping, which will be repeated on the field side. There will be no objection from the county commissioners, because we shall improve the road by taking two steep hills out of it. Your plan is much better than mine. I can see myself, for instance, driving along that road on my way to Hollis Creek from Restview, looking over that beautiful little lake to the hotel beyond, and saying to myself: 'Well, next summer I won't stop at Hollis Creek. I'll stop at Lake Jo.'"

"I thought it was to be Lake Josephine," she interposed.

"I thought so too," he agreed, "but Lake Jo just slipped out. It seems so much better. Lake Jo! That would look fine on a prospectus."

"You'd print the cover of it in blue and gold, I suppose, wouldn't you?"

"There would need to be a splash of brown-red in it," he reminded her, considering color schemes for a moment. "The roof of the hotel would, of course, be red tile. We'd build it fireproof. There is plenty of gray stone around here, and we'd build it of native rock."

"And then," she went on, in the full swing of their idea, "think of the beautiful walks and climbs you could have among these hills; and the driveway! Your approach to the hotel would come around the dam and up that hill, would wind up through those trees and rocks, and right here at the bend of the ravine it would cross the thick part of the kite tail to the hotel on a quaint rustic bridge; and as people arrived and departed you'd hear the clatter of the horses' hoofs."

"Great!" he exclaimed, catching her enthusiasm and with it augmenting his own, "and guests leaving would first wave good-by at the porte-cochère just about where we are sitting. They'd clatter across the bridge, with their friends on the porch still fluttering handkerchiefs after them; they'd disappear into the trees over yonder and around through that cleft in the rocks. And see; on the other side of the cleft there is a little tableland which juts out, and the road would wind over that, where carriages would once more be seen from the hotel porch. Then they'd twist in through the trees again down the winding driveway, and once more, for the very last glimpse, come into view as they went across our new road in front of the lake; and there the last flutter of handkerchiefs would be seen. You know it's silly to stand and wave your friends out of sight for a long distance when they're always in view, but if the view is interrupted two or three times it relieves the monotony."

CHAPTER XVIII

SAM TURNER ACQUIRES A BUSINESS PARTNER

They followed the stream down to the road, at every step gaging with the eye the height of the lake and judging the altered scenic view from the level of the water. There would be room for dozens and dozens of boats upon that surface without interference. Sam calculated that from the upper spring there would be headway enough to run a small fountain in the center, surrounded by a pond-lily bed which would be kept in place by a stone curbing. In the hill to the right there was a deep indenture. Back in there would go the bathing pavilions. They even went up to look at it, and were delighted to find a natural, shallow bowl. By cementing the floor of that bowl they could have a splendid swimming-pool for timid bathers, where they could not go beyond their depth; and it was entirely surrounded by a thick screen of shrubbery. Oh, it was delightful; it was perfect! At the road they looked back up over the valley again. It was no longer a valley. It was a lake. They could see the water there. Sam drew from his pocket a pencil and an envelope.

"The hotel will have to be long and tall," he observed, "for there will not be much room on that ledge, from front to back. The building will stretch out quite a ways. Three or four hundred feet long it will be, and about five stories in height," and taking a letter from the envelope, he sat down upon a fallen log and began rapidly to sketch.

He drew the hotel with wide-spreading Spanish roofs and balconies, and a wide porch with rippling water in front of it, and rowboats and people in them; and behind the hotel rose the broken sky-line of the hills and the trees, with an indication of fleecy clouds above. It was just a light sketch, a sort of shorthand picture, as it were, and yet it seemed full of sunlight and of atmosphere.

"I hadn't any idea you could draw like that," she exclaimed in admiration.

"I do a little of everything, I think, but nothing perfectly," he admitted with some regret.

"It seems to me you do everything excellently," she objected quite seriously; and she was, in fact, deeply impressed.

He walked over to the stream, a trifle confused, but not displeased, by any means, by the earnestness of her compliment.

"I must have the water analyzed to see if it has any medicinal virtue," he said. "The spring out of which we drank has a sweetish-like taste, but the water here—" and he caught up some of it in his hand and tasted it, "seems to be slightly salt."

He had left her sitting on the log with the sketch in her lap. Now the sketch fluttered to the ground and the letter turned over, right side up. It was a letter which Sam had written to his brother Jack and had not mailed because he had suddenly decided to come down to the scene of action. As she stooped over to pick it up her eyes caught the sentence: "I love her, Jack, more than I can tell you, more than I can tell anybody, more than I can tell myself. It's the most important, the most stupendous thing—" She hastily turned that letter over and was very careful to have it lying upon her lap, back upward, exactly as he had left it there, and when he came back she was very, very careful indeed to hand it nonchalantly over to him, with the sketch uppermost.

"Of course," he said, looking around him comprehensively, "this is only a day-dream, so far. It may be impossible to realize it."

"Why?" she asked, instantly concerned. "This project must be carried through! It is already as good as completed. It just must be done. I never before had a hand, even in a remote way, in planning a big thing, and I couldn't bear not to see this done. What is to prevent it?"

"I may not be able to get the land," returned Sam soberly. "It is probably owned by half a dozen people, and one or more of them is certain to want exorbitant prices for it."

"It certainly can't be very valuable," she protested. "It isn't fit for anything, is it?"

"For nothing but the building of Lake Jo," he agreed. "Right now it is worthless, but the minute anybody found out I wanted it it would become extremely valuable. The only way to do would be to see everybody at once and close the options before they could get to talking it over among themselves."

"What time is it?" she demanded.

He looked at his watch.

"Ten-thirty," he said.

"Then let's go and see all these people right away," she urged, jumping to her feet.

He smiled at her enthusiasm, but he was none loath to accept her suggestion.

"All right," he agreed. "I wish they had telephones here in the woods. We'll simply have to walk over to Meadow Brook and get an auto."

"Come on," she said energetically, and they started out on the road. They had not gone far, however, when young Tilloughby, with Miss Westlake, overtook them in a trap. He reined up, and Miss Westlake greeted the pedestrians with frigid courtesy. Jack Turner had accidentally dropped her a hint. Now that she had begun to appreciate Mr. Tilloughby—Bob—at his true value, she wondered what she had ever seen in Sam Turner—and she never had liked Josephine Stevens!

"Gug-gug-gug-glorious day, isn't it?" observed Tilloughby, his face glowing with joy.

"Fine," agreed Sam with enthusiasm. "There never was a more glorious day in all the world. You've just come along in time to save our lives, Tilloughby. Which way are you bound?"

"Wuw-wuw-wuw-we had intended to go around Bald Hill."

"Well, postpone that for a few minutes, won't you, Tilloughby, like a good fellow? Trot back to Meadow Brook and send an auto out here for us. Get Henry, by all means, to drive it."

"Wuw-wuw-wuw-with pleasure," replied Tilloughby, wondering at this strange whim, but restraining his curiosity like a thoroughbred. "Huh-huh-huh-Henry shall be back here for you in a jiffy," and he drove off in a cloud of dust.

Miss Stevens surveyed the retiring trap in satisfaction.

"Good," she exclaimed. "I already feel as though we were doing something to save Lake Jo."

They walked back quite contentedly to the valley and surveyed it anew, there resting now on both of them a sense of almost prideful possession. They discovered a high point on which a rustic observatory could be built; they planned paths and trails; they found where the water-line came just under an overhanging rock which would make a cave large enough for three or four boats to scurry under out of the rain. They found delightful surprises all along the bank of the future lake, and Miss Stevens declared that when the dam was built and the lake began to fill, she never intended to leave it except for meals, until it was up to the level at which they would permit the overflow to be opened.

Henry, returning with the automobile, found them far up in the valley discussing a floating band pavilion, but they came down quickly enough when they saw him, and scrambled into the tonneau with the haste of small children. Henry watched them take their places with smiling affection. He had not only had good tips but pleasant words from Sam, and Miss Stevens was her own incentive to good wishes and good will.

"Henry," said Sam, "we want to drive around to see the people who own this land."

"Oh, shucks," said Henry, disappointed. "I can't drive you there. The man that owns all this land lives in New York."

"In New York!" repeated Sam in dismay. "What would anybody in New York want with this?"

"The fellow that bought it got it about ten years ago," Henry informed them. "He was going to build a big country house, back up there in the hills, I understand, and raise deer to shoot at, and things like that; got an architect to make him plans for house and stables and all costing hundreds of thousands of dollars; but before he could break ground on it him and his wife had a spat and got a divorce. He tried to sell the land back again to the people he bought it from, but they wouldn't take it at any price. They were glad to be shut of it and none of his rich friends wanted to buy it after that, because, they said, there were so many of those cheap summer resorts around here."

"I see," said Sam musingly. "You don't happen to know the man's name, do you?"

"Dickson, I think it was. Henry Dickson. I remember his first name because it was the same as mine."

"Great!" exclaimed Sam, overjoyed. "Why, I know Henry Dickson like a book. I've engineered several deals for him. He's a mighty good friend of mine too. That simplifies matters. Drive us right over to Hollis Creek."

"To Hollis Creek!" she objected. "I should think you'd drive to Meadow Brook instead and dress for the trip. Aren't you going to catch that afternoon train and go right up there?"

"By no means. This is Saturday, and by the time I'd get to New York he couldn't be found anywhere; and anyhow, I wouldn't have time to deliver you at Hollis Creek and make this next train."

"Don't mind about me," she urged. "I could go to the train with you and Henry could take me back to Hollis Creek."

"That's fine of you," returned Sam gratefully; "but it isn't the program at all. I happen to know that Dickson stays in his office until one o'clock on Saturdays. I'll get him by long distance."

They were quite silent in calculation on the way to Hollis Creek, and Miss Josephine found herself pushing forward to help make the machine go faster. Breathlessly she followed Sam into the house, and he obligingly left the door of the telephone booth ajar, so that she could hear his conversation with Dickson.

"Hello, Dickson," said Sam, when he got his connection. "This is Sam Turner.… Oh yes, fine. Never better in my life.… Up here in Hamster County, taking a little vacation. Say, Dickson, I understand you own a thousand acres down here. Do you want to sell it?… How much?" As he received the answer to that question he turned to Miss Josephine and winked, while an expression of profound joy, albeit materialized into a grin, overspread his features. "I won't dicker with you on that price," he said into the telephone. "But will you take my note for it at six per cent.?"

He laughed aloud at the next reply.

"No, I don't want it to run that long. The interest in a hundred years would amount to too much; but I'll make it five years.… All right, Dickson, instruct your lawyer chap to make out the papers and I'll be up Monday to close with you."

He hung up the receiver and turned to meet her glistening eyes fixed upon him in ecstasy. "It's better than all right," he assured her. He was more enthusiastic about this than he had ever been about any business deal in his life, that is, more openly enthusiastic, for Miss Josephine's enthusiasm was contagion itself. He took her arm with a swing, and they hurried into the writing-room, which was deserted for the time being on account of the mail having just come in. Sam placed a chair for her and they sat down at the table.

"I want to figure a minute," said he. "Now that I have actual possession of the property, in place of a mere option, I can go at the thing differently. First of all, when I go up Monday I'll see my engineer, and on Tuesday morning I'll bring him down here with me. Then I shall secure permission from the county to alter that road and we'll build the dam. That will cost very little in comparison to the whole improvement. Then, and not till then, I'll get out my stock prospectus, and I'll drive prospective investors down here to look at Lake Jo. I'll be almost in position to dictate terms."

"Isn't that fine!" she exclaimed. "And then I suppose you can secure—control," she ventured anxiously.

"Yes, I think I can if I want it," he assured her.

"I'm so glad," she said gravely. "I'm so very glad."

"Really, though, I have a big notion to see if I can't finance the entire project myself. I'm quite sure I can get Dickson to give me a clear deed to that land merely on my unsupported note. If I can do that I can erect all the buildings on progressive mortgages. Roadways and engineering work of course I'll have to pay for, and then I can finance a subsidiary operating company to rent the plant from the original company, and can retain stock in both of them. I'll figure that out both ways."

It was all Greek to her, this talk, but she knitted her brows in an earnest effort to understand, and crowded close to him to look over the figures he was putting down. The touch of her arm against his own threw out his calculations entirely. He could not add a row of figures to save his life.

"I'll go over the financial end of this later on," he said, but he did not put away the paper. He kept it there for them both to look at, touching arms.

"All right," she agreed, "but you must let me see you do it. Of course I can't understand, but I do want to feel as if I were helping when it is done."

"I won't take a step in it without consulting you or having you along," he promised.

At that moment the bugle sounded the first call for luncheon.

"You'll stay for luncheon," she invited.

"Certainly," he assured her. "You couldn't drive me away."

"Very well, right after luncheon let's go out and look at the place again. It will look different now that it is—" She caught herself. She had almost said "now that it is ours." "Now that it is secured," she finished.

After luncheon they drove back to the site of Lake Jo, and spent a delirious while planning the things which were to be done to make that spot an earthly Paradise. Never was a couple so prolific of ideas as they were that afternoon. With 'Ennery waiting down in the road they tramped all over the hills again, standing first on one spot and then another to survey the alluring prospect, and to plan wonderful new and attractive features of which no previous summer resort builder had ever even dared to dream.

During the afternoon not one word passed between them which might be construed to be of an intimately personal nature, but as they drove to Hollis Creek, tired but happy, Sam somehow or other felt that he had made quite a bit of progress, and was correspondingly elated. Leaving Miss Stevens on the porch he hurried home to dress for dinner, for it was growing late, but immediately after dinner he drove over again. When he arrived Miss Josephine was in the seldom used parlor with her father.

"I haven't seen you since breakfast," Mr. Stevens had said, pinching her cheek, "Hollis and Billy Westlake have been looking for you everywhere."

"Oh, they," she returned with kindly contempt. "I'm glad I didn't see them. They're nice boys enough, but father, I don't believe that either one of them will ever become clever business men!"

"No?" he replied, highly amused. "Well, I don't think they will either. Business is a shade too big a game for them. But where have you been?"

"Out on business with S-s-s—with Mr. Turner," she replied demurely. "I came in late for lunch, and you had already finished and gone. Then we went right back out again. Father, we have found the dearest, the most delightful, the most charming business opportunity you ever saw. You must go out with us to-morrow and look at it. Sam's going to build a lake and call it Lake Jo. You know where that little stream is between here and Meadow Brook? Well, that's the place. We found out this morning what a delightful spot it would make for a lake and a big summer resort hotel, and at noon Sam bought the property, and we have been planning it all afternoon. He's bought it outright and he's going to capitalize it for a quarter of a million dollars. How much stock are you going to take in it?"

"How much what?"

"How many shares of stock are you going to take in it? You must speak up quickly, because it's going to be a favor to you for us to let you in."

"Well, I don't know," said Mr. Stevens, resisting a sudden desire to guffaw. "I'd have to look it over first before I decide to invest. Sounds like a sort of wild-eyed scheme to me. Besides that, I already have a good big block of stock in one of Sam Turner's enterprises."

"Oh, yes," she said, puckering her brows. "Are you going to vote your pulp stock with his?"

Mr. Stevens' eyes twinkled, but his tone was conservative gravity itself.

"Well, since it's a purely business deal it would not be a very wise thing to do; and though Sam Turner is a mighty fine boy, I don't think I shall."

"But you will!" she vigorously protested. "Why, father, you wouldn't for a minute vote against your own son-in-law!"

"No, I wouldn't!" declared Mr. Stevens emphatically, and suddenly drew her to him and kissed her; and she clung about his neck half laughing and half crying.

Do you suppose there is anything in telepathy? It would seem so, for it was at this moment that Sam stepped up on the porch. They in the parlor heard his voice, and Mr. Stevens immediately slipped out the back way in order not to be de trop a second time. Now Sam could not possibly have known what had been said in the parlor, and yet when he found his way in there, he and Miss Josephine, without any palaver about it, without exchanging a solitary word, or scarcely even a look, just naturally fell into each other's arms. Neither one of them made the first move. It just somehow happened, and they stood there and held and held and held that embrace; and whatever foolishness they said and did in the next hour is none of your business nor of mine; but later in the evening, when they were sitting quietly in the darkest corner of the porch, and Sam had his hand on the arm of her chair with her elbows resting upon his fingers—it didn't matter, you know, where he touched her, just so he did—she turned to him with thoughtful earnestness in her voice.

"Sam," she said, and this time she used his first name quite consciously and was glad it was dark so that he could not see her trace of shyness, "I wish you would explain to me just what you mean by control in a stock company."

Sam Turner moved his fingers from under her elbow and caught her hand, which he firmly clasped before he began.

"Well, Jo, it's just this way," he said, and then, quite comfortably, he explained to her all about it.