“He don’t,” Mr. Kohn remarked. “He spoke to me yesterday a good deal about it at bank directors’ meeting. No, Mr. Oliphant; don’t you expect it. You ain’t goin’ to git no car line until you got people out there, and how can you git people out there till you git a car line? Now wait!” With a placative gesture he checked Dan, who had instantly begun to explain that with enough capital the Addition could build its own tracks. “Wait a minute,” Mr. Kohn went on. “If you can’t git enough capital for your Addition how could you git it for a car line, too? No, Mr. Oliphant; but I want to tell you I got some idea maybe you’re right about how this city’s goin’ to grow. I’ve watched it for thirty years, and also I know something myself how the people been comin’ from Europe, and how they’re still comin’. It ain’t only them;—people come to the cities from the country like they didn’t used to. The more they git a little bit education, the more they want to live in a city; that’s where you’re goin’ to git a big puportion the people you claim’s goin’ to crowd in here.
“But listen a minute, Mr. Oliphant; that there Ornaby’s farm is awful far out in the country. Now wait! I’m tellin’ you now, Mr. Oliphant, please. Times are changin’ because all the time we git so much new invented machinery. Workin’ people are willin’ to live some ways from where they work, even if they ain’t on a car line. Why is that? It’s because they can’t afford a horse and buggy, but now they got bicycles. But you can’t git ’em to live as far out as that there Ornaby’s farm, even with bicycles, because except in summer the roads ain’t nothing but mud or frozen ruts and snow, and you can’t git no asphalt street put out there. The city council wouldn’t ever——”
“Not to-day,” Dan admitted. “I don’t expect to do this all in a week or so, Mr. Kohn. But ten years from now——”
“Yes; that’s it!” Mr. Kohn interrupted. “You come around and talk to me ten years from now about it, and I might put some money into it then. To-day I can’t see it. All at the same time if I was you I wouldn’t be discouraged. I won’t put a cent in it, Mr. Oliphant, because the way it stands now, it don’t look to me like no good proposition. But you already got your own money in; you should go ahead and not git discouraged because who can swear you won’t git it out again? Many’s the time I seen a man git his money out and clean up nice when everybody believed against him, the way they all believe against this here Ornaby’s farm right to-day.” He rose from his chair and offered his hand. “I got a business date, Mr. Oliphant, so I must excuse. I’m glad to talk with you because you’re old friends with Sam here, and he always speaks so much about you at our family meals at the home. Good-bye, Mr. Oliphant;—I only got to say I’m wishin’ you good luck, and hope you keep on at it till you win. You got as good a chance as many a man, so don’t give it up.”
Dan repeated the last four words a little ruefully as he went down in the elevator with Sam, who was his escort. “ ‘Don’t give it up.’ Well, not very likely!” He laughed at the idea of giving it up; then sighed reflectively. “Well, anyhow, he’s the first one I’ve talked to that said it. Most of the others just had a grand time laughin’ at me and told me to give it up! I appreciate your father’s friendliness, Sam.”
Sam shook his head. “It ain’t that exactly,” he said, with a cautious glance at the young man who operated the elevator. “Wait a minute and I’ll tell you.” And when they had emerged upon the ground floor, he followed his friend through the busy aisles and out to the sidewalk. “It’s this way, Dan,” he said. “You ain’t got any bigger ideas of how we’re goin’ to have a great city here than what papa has; he don’t talk so much in public, as it were, the way you been doin’, but home I wonder how many thousand times we got to listen to him! That’s why you had him so interested he sat still like that. But he ain’t goin’ to put money in it now. I know papa awful well; it ain’t his way. I wouldn’t say it to anybody but you, Dan, but I expect right now he’ll own a good many shares stock in that Ornaby farm some day.”
“What?” Dan cried, surprised. “Why, you just said——”
“I said he won’t put money in now,” Sam explained, with a look of some compassion. “Papa won’t ever take a gamble, Dan; he ain’t the kind. He’ll wait till you go broke on this Ornaby farm; then, if it looks good by that time, he’ll get a couple his business friends in with him, maybe, and they’ll send some feller after dark to buy it for thirty-five cents. He wouldn’t never mean you no ill will by it, though, Dan.”
“Oh, I know that,” Dan said, and laughed. “But you’re mistaken about one thing, Sam, and so’s he, if he counts on it.”
“What’s that?”