The fact was, several of the boys had heard about Katy through Tiny and their sisters, but they could not, or rather would not, resist the temptation to tease Johnny, when they saw the foolish annoyance which her coming had caused him. It has often been noticed how a word, or even a look, will turn the tide, in affairs like this, and even in much larger ones, and Johnny’s bold championship of Katy had done this at once.
It was a good day for her when she invaded the playground, for Johnny kept his word about showing her where to buy, and, knowing as he did the things which would be most likely to sell well, the result was that, after a few lessons, poor little Katy, who was slow rather than stupid, began to show real judgment in her purchases. She was always modest and quiet in her manner to the boys, and the result of this was that their chaffing never passed the bounds of harmless fun. They called her “The Daughter of the Regiment,” and threatened her with dire penalties, should she not always come “first and foremost” to their playground with her new stock.
“I’ve often thought, Tiny,” said Johnny, long afterward, when Katy had made and saved enough to buy a second-hand counter, have shelves put in the front room of the two which she and the old woman occupied, and start a small but promising business. “I’ve often thought of how it would have been if I had cut and run. And it seems to me that the ‘way of escape’—about temptations, you know—is right straight ahead!”
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CIRCULAR CITY.
Mr. Leslie made a discovery.
He had remarked, early in the spring, that when he was really rich, when he had five or six millions of dollars, he was going to build a city in the form of a very large circle, only two streets deep, and inside of this circle was to be an immense farm.
“I shall begin,” he said, “by finding and buying a ready-made farm, for the farmhouse and barns and orchard and garden must all be old. I shall put all this in perfect order, without making it look new. Then I shall build twenty-five Swiss cottages, each with three rooms and a great deal of veranda. I shall buy twenty-five excellent tents, and hide them about in the orchard and shrubberies, and I shall invite my friends, fifty families at a time, to come and stay a month with me on my farm; and if my friends should all be used up before the summer is over, I will ask some of them to nominate some of their friends. And in the meantime,” he added, dropping his millionaire tone of voice suddenly, “if we can find the farm and the farmhouse, we will make a beginning by going there for the summer, and planning the rest out.”