"What do you want that belongs to her?" I asked. "Her island, perhaps?"
"Only right of way across it. But 'that's a detail.' She is the owner of something else we do want—this piece of ground,"—he looked about him and waved his hand,—"and all this above us, where our power-plant must stand. And our business is to persuade her to sign the lease, or, if she won't lease, to sell it when we are ready to buy. We have to make sure of that piece of ground. This place is so confoundedly cut up with scenery and nonsense, there's not a spot available for our plant but this. We'll bridge the lagoon and make a landing on that point of birches over there."
"You will! And do you suppose she will sign a lease to empower you to wipe her off the face of the earth—abolish her and her pretty island at one fell swoop?"
"She knows nothing yet about our designs upon her toy island. We haven't approached her on that. We could manage without it at a pinch."
"So good of you!" I murmured.
"But we can't manage without a place to put our power-house."
"She'll have to sign her own death-warrant, of course. If you get a footing for your power-house you'll want the island next. I never heard of such grasping profanation."
"Well, if Cecy could see his way to fall in love with her,—I wouldn't ask him to woo her in cold blood,—it would be a monstrous convenient way to settle it."
"Why do you say such things before her?" I asked Tom when we were alone. "They are not pretty things to say, in the first place."
"Have you noticed how she is always snubbing him? I thought it time somebody should try the counter-snub. He's not solely dependent for the joys of life on the crumbs of her society."