“That’s it, grandma.”
She shook her head in pitying skepticism. “You can’t carry it out. In the first place, the town’ll never grow that far out——”
“Yes, it will,” he interrupted eagerly. “Why, in three years at the longest——”
“No,” she said; “it won’t. Not in three years and not in thirty. Anyhow, your grandfather only left you twenty-five thousand dollars. You’d better keep it and not throw it away, Dan.”
“I can get the Ornaby farm for seventeen thousand,” he informed her. “That’ll leave eight thousand to clear off the lots and put asphalt streets through and——”
“Put asphalt streets through!” she echoed. “How many miles of asphalt streets do you expect to build with eight thousand dollars after you’ve cleared the lots and advertised enough to boom an Addition?”
“I’ve been hopin’ I’d get help on that,” he said, his colour heightening a little. “I thought maybe I could get Harlan to come in with the twenty-five thousand grandpa left him. If he does——”
“He won’t. Harlan isn’t the kind to risk anything. He won’t.”
“Well, then,” Dan said, “I’ll go ahead and get other people. I’m goin’ to do it, grandma, if I have to take an ax and a shovel and a wheelbarrow out there and do it all by myself. I’ve been thinkin’ it over a long time, and I know it’s a big thing.” He laughed a little at his own enthusiasm, but again declared, with earnest determination: “Yes, ma’am! I’m goin’ to build ‘Ornaby Addition.’ ”
But his grandmother’s compassionate skepticism was not lessened. On the contrary, she asked him quietly: “You’re going to build ‘Ornaby Addition’ at the same time you expect to be living in New York with this photograph girl for a wife? How do you think you’ll manage it, Dan?”