"They had me out here last Sunday," he said, looking about his chaotic domain disparagingly, "and they say they may have to have me out here next Sunday--somebody's sick or missing. But they won't," he continued darkly. It was a threat, we felt--a threat that would make some presumptuous superior cower and conform. "I really belong at our branch in Dellwood Park, where there _is_ something; not out here, beyond the last of everything." And he said more to indicate that his energies and abilities were temporarily going to waste. But having put himself right in his own eyes and in ours, he began to give rein to his fundamental good nature. Emerging from the cloud that was just now darkening his merits and his future, he asked, interestedly enough, what we ourselves were doing. I had to confess that I was still a student. Raymond mentioned briefly and reluctantly the bank. It was nothing to him that he, no less than Johnny, was now a man on a salary. "Bank, eh?" said Johnny. "That's good. We're thinking of starting a bank next year at our Dellwood branch. It's far enough in, and it's far enough out. Plenty of good little businesses all around there. And I'm going to make them let me have a hand in managing it." This warm ray of hope from the immediate future quite illumined Johnny. He told us genially about the prospects of the venture in the midst of which he was encamped, and ended by feigning us as a young bridal couple that had come out to look for a "home." "There may be one or two along pretty soon, if the day holds fair; so I might as well keep myself in practice." Then he jocularly let himself loose on transportation, and part payments down, and street improvements "in," and healthful country air for young children. He was very fluent and somewhat cynical, and turned the seamy side of his trade a little too clearly to view. He explained how the spring had been exceptionally wet in that region,--"which, after all, _is_ low," he acknowledged,--and how his firm, by digging a few trenches in well-considered directions, had drained all its standing water to adjoining acres still lower, the property of a prospective rival. Recalling this smart trick made Johnny think better of the people who would maroon him for a succession of Sundays, and he became more genially communicative still. "That gray streak off to the west--if you can see it--is our water drying up. Better be drying there than here. You can put a solid foot on every yard of our ground to-day. Come along with me and I'll show you your cottage--_domus, a, um_. Not quite right? Well, no great matter." He pointed toward a yellow pile of two-by-fours, siding, and shingles. "Be sure you make your last payment before you find yourselves warped out of shape."