Paul was boss-carpenter, having charge of all the building operations; quite a responsibility for a fellow not quite of age. So far they had completed forty shacks for the workers’ families, costing about six hundred dollars each, and renting for thirty dollars a month, with water, gas and electric light free. No one knew exactly what these latter services cost, so Bunny could not determine whether the price was fair or not, and neither could the oil workers; but Dad said they were glad to get the houses, which was the business man’s way of determining fairness. But there was one point upon which Bunny had interfered with energy; he didn’t see why everything about the oil industry had to be so ugly, and certainly something ought to be done about these shacks. He asked Ruth about it, and they drove to a nursery in San Elido, and without saying anything to Dad, incurred a bill for a hundred young acacia trees, each in a tin can, and two hundred climbing roses, each with its roots tied up in a gunny sack. So now at every shack there was a young tree with a stake beside it, and all along the road there were frames made of gas pipe, with a rose vine getting ready to climb. It was Ruth’s duty once a month to pull one of the laborers off his job and make him soak the trees and the vines, and next day cultivate them and dig away the grass and weeds. For this service Ruth was compelled to receive a salary of ten dollars a month, and bore the imposing title of “Superintendent of Horticultural Operations.” Bunny would inspect the growing plants, and sit in his reading-room, and persuade himself that he had made a start as a social reformer, resolving the disharmonies between capital and labor, about which he was being taught in the “social ethics” class in school.