A month later the suggestion of foundation stones bore fruit. The King floated a company, and Fortunatus Rex & Co. became almost at once the largest speculative builders in the world. Perhaps you do not know what a speculative builder is. I’ll tell you what the King and his Co. did, and then you will know. They bought all the pretty woods and fields they could get and cut them up into squares, and grubbed up the trees and the grass and put streets there and lamp-posts and ugly little yellow brick houses, in the hopes that people would want to live in them. And curiously enough people did. So the King and his Co. made quite a lot of money. It is curious that nearly all the great fortunes are made by turning beautiful things into ugly ones. Making beauty out of ugliness is very ill-paid work. The ugly little streets crawled further and further out of the town, eating up the green country like greedy yellow caterpillars, but at the foot of the Clover Hill they had to stop. For the owner of Clover Hill would not sell any land at all—for any price that Fortunatus Rex & Co. could offer. In vain the solicitors of the Company called on the solicitors of the owner, wearing their best cloaks and swords and shields, and took them out to lunch and gave them nice things to eat and drink. Clover Hill was not for sale. At last, however, a little old woman all in grey called at the Company’s shining brass and mahogany offices and had a private interview with the King himself. “I am the owner of Clover Hill,” said she, “and you may build on all its acres except the seven at the top and the fifteen acres that go round that seven, and you must build me a high wall round the seven acres and another round the fifteen—of _red_ brick, mind; none of your cheap yellow stuff—and you must make a brand new law that any one who steals my fruit is to be hanged from the tree he stole it from. That’s all. What do you say?” The King said “Yes,” because since his trouble he cared for nothing but building, and his royal soul longed to see the green Clover Hill eaten up by yellow brick caterpillars with slate tops. He did not at all like building the two red brick walls, but he did it. Now, the old woman wanted the walls and the acres to be this sort of shape— [Illustration] But it was such a bother getting the exact amount of ground into the two circles that all the surveyors tore out their hair by handfuls, and at last the King said, “Oh bother! Do it this way,” and drew a plan on the back of an old Act of Parliament. So they did, and it was like this— +---+---+ | 1 | 2 | +---+---+---+---+---+ | 13| 14| 15| I | 3 | +---+---+---+---+---+ | 12| II|III| IV| 4 | +---+---+---+---+---+ | 11| V | VI|VII| 5 | +---+---+---+---+---+ | 10| 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | +---+---+---+---+---+ [Illustration]