"Yes," said I, "Mr. Doller spoke to me about that twenty-five-foot strip some time ago."
"Aha, so Doller has been approaching you, has he?" said Mr. Leet, softly. "Well, Doller is very cunning—very cunning, indeed. But he has nothing to do with the north strip. He owns the twenty-five feet to the south of your property, the piece fronting on Sandpile Terrace, and a very malarious location it is, too. I pledge you my word, Mr. Baker, I have seen mosquitos hovering over that Doller strip at night as big as bats!"
I could neither deny nor affirm the truth of this assertion.
"My twenty-five-foot strip to the north," continued Mr. Leet, "is high and dry and sightly. The view it commands of the Water Works is indescribably fine. You are surely practical enough to see, Mr. Baker, that by purchasing that strip and throwing it in with yours you will have a subdivision fronting upon Dandelion Place which would offer unparalleled inducements to the seeker after suburban property. What is more," added Mr. Leet in a confidential whisper, "it would not surprise me a bit if there were coal deposits in the twenty-five-foot strip of mine. I have very distinct suspicions, but the paramount importance of my other business interests has prevented me from making the investigation which might enrich me beyond all calculation. Now, you have time, and if you feel disposed to take that property I 'll let you have it at the merely nominal price of one hundred and twenty-five dollars a front foot."
This seemed reasonable enough, particularly when I considered the chances of there being a coal mine on the property. However, as I had told Mr. Doller, so I now told Mr. Leet: I would first have to speak to Alice about the matter. Then I confided to Mr. Leet the object of my mission down-town. Presumably in the hope of insuring and clinching my devotion to his interests as represented in his twenty-five-foot lot, Mr. Leet manifested solicitude in my behalf and inveighed bitterly against the shiftlessness of the municipal administration as illustrated in the neglect to tap the water main for the benefit of my property.
"The most aggravatingly exasperating part of it all," says I, "is that I am a Republican and have been one for thirty years. Moreover, I am a reformer, having helped to organize the Civic Federation and having served for somewhat more than a year as chairman of the Special Committee on Ash Barrels and Garbage Boxes in the third precinct of the Twenty-fifth Ward. I made several addresses during the last campaign in advocacy of civil-service reform and all those other reforms which are invariably advocated and promised by the party which is not in power but wants to be. In the thirty years that I have been a Republican I have never asked a favor of my party, and it does seem just a bit ungrateful that the Republican reform municipal administration which I helped to elect should seize with apparent avidity upon its first opportunity to snub me by refusing to tap the public water main in front of my property."
"You should see Mayor Speedy about it," suggested Mr. Leet.
"I thought of doing so," said I, "but as I had already determined to approach him with reference to changing the name of Mush Street to Clarendon Avenue, I concluded that I ought not to call upon him with this complaint about the water. I particularly wish to avoid all appearance of hampering the administration with importunities and complaints of a personal nature."
"A man of your reputation," said Mr. Leet, "should certainly have the strongest kind of a pull at the City Hall."
"You may not believe it," said I, "but I do not know a man in the City Hall. I visit the place but twice a year, and my dealings on those occasions are restricted to a haughty young foreigner, who graciously permits me to pay him the amount of my water tax and then waves me to another foreigner who in turn waves me to the door. No, I have no influence at the City Hall, and as I was telling Editor Woodsit last week—"