"Well, hain't we got a crick? They calculate that with a proper dam above town, we'd have water-power nine months every year, an' there ain't nothin' else o' the kind within fifty mile. Then there's our clay banks that the town was named after; they're the only banks of brick clay in the state; ev'rywhere else folks has to dig some feet down for clay to make bricks, so we ought to make brick cheaper'n any other town, an' supply all the country round—when we get a railroad to haul 'em out. They're not as red as some, bein' really brown, but they're a mighty sight harder'n any red brick, so they're better for foundations an' for walls o' big buildings. Chicago didn't have no clay banks nor water-power, but just look at her now! All that made her was her bein' the first tradin' place in the neighborhood; well, so's Claybanks, an' it's been so for forty year or more, too, so its time must be almost come. Your uncle 'xpected to see it all in his time, but, like Moses, he died without the sight. Why, there's been three or four railroads surveyed right through here—yes, sir!"
"Is there any Western town that couldn't say as much, I wonder?" Philip asked.
"Mebbe not, but they hain't all got clay banks an' a crick; not many of 'em's got eleven hundred people in forty year, either. An' say—it's all right for you to talk this way with me—askin' questions an' so on, an' wonderin' if the place'll ever 'mount to anythin', but don't let out a bit of it to anybody else—not for a farm. You might's well be dead out here as not to believe in the West with all your might, an' most of all in this part of it."
"Thank you; I'll remember."
Then Philip went out and walked slowly about the shabby village until he found himself in the depths of the blues.
VI—THE UNEXPECTED
"THE nicer half of the You-I seems buried in contemplation this morning," said Philip at his breakfast table, the Saturday before Christmas.
"The home-half of the You-I," Grace replied, after a quick rally from a fit of abstraction, "was thinking that it saw very little of the store-half this week, except when she went to the store to look for it. Was business really so exacting, or was it merely absorbing?"