“But what does that mean?” demanded Mrs. Groarty. “Are they to get a royalty on a ninety-five foot lot?” “Our offer is to sign the document as it stands, and the question of interpretation may be decided later.” “Oho!” said Mr. Groarty. “A fine concession that—and when we’ve just heard Mr. Prentice tell us that the law reads your way!” “We agreed to sign it,” said Mr. Hank, doing his best to make his voice sound pleasant. “Oh, listen to who’s talking!” cried Miss Snypp. “The gentleman that was saying, less than a half an hour ago, that we should go back to our original arrangement—‘the only sensible one, share and share alike, all lots equal, same as we vote.’ Have I quoted you correct, Mr. Hank?” “I agreed to sign this lease,” declared the ex-goldminer, stubbornly. “And for my part,” said the trained nurse, “I said it once and I’ll say it again, never on this earth!” VII Old Mrs. Ross, Bunny’s grandmother, was accustomed to protest strenuously against a boy being taken about on these business trips. It was enough to destroy all the sweetness of his nature, she declared; it would make him a hardened cynic in his childhood, all this sordidness and hatefulness of money-grabbing. But Bunny’s father answered that that was life, and there was no good fooling yourself; Bunny would have to live in the world some day, and the quicker he learned about it the better. So there the boy sat, on his perch in the window-sill, watching, and recalling his grandmother’s words. Yes, they were a mean bunch, sure enough; Dad was right when he said you had to watch out every minute, because somebody would be trying to take something away from you. These people had simply gone crazy, with the sudden hope of getting a lot of money in a hurry. Bunny, who had always had all the money he could use, looked down with magnificent scorn upon their petty bickering. You couldn’t trust such people around the corner, he decided; there was nothing they wouldn’t do to you. That fat old woman in the yellow satin dress, with her fat red arms and her fat legs cased in silk—it wouldn’t take much more to have her clawing somebody’s face. And that hatchet-faced man with the voice like a buzz-saw—he would be capable of sticking a knife into you on a dark night!