This was what those children had meant! It was the house built upon the swamp, of course, decided the startled Gloria.
“And couldn’t anything be done with it?” She found herself saying.
“Seems not.” Squire Hanaford scratched his head meditatively.
“And they have another house?” Gloria could not quite grasp this startling fact.
“Now, you listen to me, little girl, and make no mistake,” said the legal man. “There ain’t nothin’ wrong about your Aunt Hattie. Folks blame her a lot, for indulgin’ her fastid-i-ous daughter and the like-o-that, but they don’t know everything,” he insisted. “The fact is, your aunt wanted to turn five hundred dollars into one thousand. The offer was made her an’ a lot of others—she ain’t to blame alone. Others bit just as hard. Well, here’s what happened. This speculator was a young man, a likable chap. He thought he saw a good thing, bought up that strip of land and made a little picture book park out of it. And I’ll say this for him, he worked hard himself.”
Mr. Hanaford paused for breath. Also for a moment’s reflection, and Gloria seized upon the space to insert a question of her own.
“Did they call it Echo Park?” she asked eagerly.
“The very name. Wasn’t that fanciful? Just like a magazine picture and the whole thing now is—a swamp.”
“I’ve heard of the place,” said Gloria like one dazed. “It is out near where my—my friend, Miss Jane Morgan, is visiting her sister. Wasn’t it too bad? And did poor Aunt Hattie lose the money in that venture?”
“That’s where it went to,” said Homer Hanaford with finality.