"There ought, Phil, but there ain't. I'm still hoping to pull that scheme out, but it takes time. You know this town doesn't know how to back up its enterprises."
"Cease knocking! What you want to do is to stop trying to organize an undertakers' trust in this town where everybody lives to a green old age and get busy with brick. The last time I was in Indianapolis I saw a lot of new houses built out of brick that looked just about like those pink-and-yellow effects you started in on. They came from over in Illinois somewhere, and I guess the clay's off the very same stratum. What you ought to do is to nail close to some of the city architects and hypnotize them into using your goods."
"We tried all that, Phil; but they wouldn't listen."
"Let me see; what name did you give those bricks?"
"We called 'em the 'Gold Finish.' Nothing the matter with that, is there?"
"'Most everything's the matter with that name. Anything that suggests a gold brick is bound to scare sensible people. Think of living in a house that people would laugh at and call the 'gold-brick' house! You've got to get a lot better, Paul. Try once more and call 'em the 'Daffodil' or the 'Crocus'—something that sounds springlike and cheerful. And play up local pride—a Hoosier product for Hoosier people. Then when you've done that, fly to Chicago and give away enough to build a house in one of the new suburbs and daffodils will spring up all over the prairie. Am I lucid?"
"There may be something in giving an old dog a new name. I've a good notion to give it a try, and if—"
"Oh, there's no charge! You might send me up a couple of those brick; I can use 'em for nut-crackers."
Judge Walters once said of Phil that if she would keep a diary and write down honestly everything that happened to her if would some day put Pepys to the blush. Not every day was as rich in adventure as this; but this is not a bad sample. If Phil had been a prig or fresh or impertinent, she would not have been the idol of Main Street. A genius for being on the spot when events are forward must be born in one, and her casual, indifferent air contributed to a belief in Main Street that she was leagued with supernatural agencies. If there was a fire, Phil arrived ahead of the department; and if a prisoner broke out of jail, Phil knew it before the "Evening Star" could print the fact.
"Some one told me," Captain Wilson would begin, addressing Judge Walters; and the judge would answer, "Otherwise Phyllis." And the judge would say, "I'm going to quit taking the 'Star' and subscribe for Phil."