“Well, I hope it will be a success,” Mrs. Vivian declared, with a sigh.
“Why, it has already,” both the girls exclaimed together. “No one had ever imagined that it would succeed so soon. We all hoped it would in a few years, but it is growing so fast that it is taking nearly all of Tom’s time just to manage it. That is how I happened to become his secretary,” Nellie said.
During the conversation some young people had called, and Mira had shown them into the library until her mother and sisters had finished their talk, then joined the rest. Jack Mobray was there and it was hard to remember afterwards how he and Mira could have had a chance to talk over their arrangements to leave the old home as they afterwards did, but when the young are in love they find a way.
In a few days the two girls had returned to the city. Tom and Nellie to the farm that the society had secured to start the colony, and, as the mother had predicted, Mira left her also a few days afterwards, although she had never thought of her child marrying so young, nor did she suspect the attachment between them. She did think that Mira might wish to go to the city. The whole family had become restless as they grew up; even Geron had hinted that he was tired of living all his life on the estate.
Tom and Nellie were settled in the farm house, for though it was in the fall of the year they had decided to take up their residence then so as to get ready for the spring building. Materials were being collected so as to cause no delay. The past year Tom had gone in different directions from the city looking the country over before this place had been selected. In this way it gave him an opportunity of locating just the kind of land needed for the many uses that would be required of it.
A large lake was on one side with clear, cool water, an abundance of large trees on its edge, sufficient to make a pleasant place for a summer resort and yet not interfere with the farm. This lake was not very far from the farm buildings and was not on the road but partly on the next farm adjoining, with sufficient, however, on the society’s property to enable them to control or have the use of it.
They had not intended to take up the land in the fall, but Tom had seen the advisability of securing it while it was in the market. The owner had died suddenly, leaving it to his widow, and she being anxious to go to the next town to her children who were married, it was arranged that the rent would not begin until the following spring. The house was not large or of much account, but it answered the purpose, and the land had been obtained cheaper on that account. It was the land and fruit that had first attracted Tom’s attention after he had proved the nature of the soil. He had secured a lease for ninety-nine years with the privilege of buying the whole of it at any time at a set price, of erecting any kind of buildings that the society might deem proper, the said buildings to belong to the society exclusively.
They enjoyed their new home, these two enterprising people, because they liked to know that they were making a start for many hundreds, if not thousands, of others to live happily and contentedly in years to come.
There, however, I will leave them for the present and go back to the beginning of the society before Tom’s marriage.