“Honestly, it hurts!” said Bobby wearily, telling of the incident to Agnes that night. “I didn’t know there were so many unsportsmanlike people.”
“I think that is precisely what your father wanted you to find out,” she observed.
“I don’t want to know it,” protested Bobby. “I’d stay much happier to believe that everybody in the world was of the right sort.”
She shook her head.
“No, Bobby,” she said gently; “you have to know that there is the other kind, in order properly to appreciate truth and honor and loyalty.”
“I could almost believe I was in a Sunday-school class,” grinned Bobby. “No wonder it’s snowing.”
Agnes looked out of the window with a cry of delight. Those floating flakes were the very first snow of the season; but they were by no means the last. The winter, delayed, but apparently all the more violent for that very reason, burst suddenly upon the city, stopping the finishing touches on both suburban additions. Came rain and sleet and snow, and rain and sleet and snow again, then biting cold that sank deep into the ground and sealed it as if with a crust of iron. March, that had come in like a lamb, went out like a lion, and the lion raged through April and into May. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the belated winter passed away and the warm sun beat down upon the snow-clad hills and swept them clean. It penetrated into the valleys and turned them into rivulets, thousands of which poured into the river and swelled its banks brimming full. The streets of the Applerod Addition were quickly washed with their own white covering and dried, and immediately with this break-up began the great advertising campaign. The papers flamed with full-page and half-page announcements of the wonderful home-making opportunity; circulars were mailed to possible home-buyers by the hundred thousand; every street-car told of the bargain on striking cards; immense electric signs blazoned the project by night; sixteen-sheet posters were spread upon all the bill-boards, and every device known to expert advertising was requisitioned. Not one soul within the city or within a radius of fifty miles but had kept constantly before him the duty he owed to himself to purchase a lot in the marvelous Applerod Addition; and now indeed Oliver P. Applerod, reassured once more, began to reap the fruit of his life’s ambitions as prospective buyers thronged to look at his frock-coat and silk hat.
June the first was set for the date of the “grand opening,” and though it was not to be a month of roses, still the earth looked bright and gay as the time approached, and Bobby Burnit took Agnes out to view his coming triumph. This was upon a bright day toward the end of May, when those yellow squares were tempered to a golden green by the tender young grass that had been sown at the completion of the grading. She had made frequent visits with him through the winter, and now she gloried with him.
“It looks fine, Bobby,” she confessed with glowing eyes. “Fine! It really seems as if you had won your spurs.”
“Diamond-studded ones!” he exulted. “Why, Agnes, the office is besieged with requests for allotments. In spite of the fact that we have over eleven hundred lots for sale at an average price of six hundred dollars, we’re not going to have enough to go around. The receipts will be fully seven hundred thousand dollars, and our complete disbursements, by the time we have sold out, will not amount to over two hundred and twenty-five thousand. Of course, I don’t know—I haven’t asked, and you wouldn’t tell me if I did—just by what promises you are bound, but when I close up this deal you’re going to marry me! That’s flat!”