"Really!" says Vee. "How funny!" "It's part of the plot," says I. "Tell the Professor to spread himself on the eatings, and have the rooms all fixed up slick." Vee says she will. And she does. MacGregor falls for it, too. You should have seen him after dinner, leanin' back comfortable in our biggest chair, sippin' his coffee, and puffin' one of Old Hickory's special perfectos that I'd begged for the occasion. And still I didn't let on. What I'm after is to have him spring the proposition on me. Just before he's ready to go, too, he does. "I say," says he casual, "this isn't such a bad hole you have here." "Perfectly rotten," says I. "Then we might make a trade," says he. "What?" "There's no tellin'," says I. "You mean a swap, as things stand?" "That's it," says he. "I'm no hand for moving rubbish about." "Me either," says I. "But if you mean business, suppose you drop in to-morrow at the office, about ten-thirty, and talk it over." "Very well," says MacGregor. "I'll stop in town to-night." "Oh, Torchy!" says Vee, after he's gone. "Do--do you suppose he will--really?" "You're still for it, eh?" says I. "Sure, now?" "Oh, it would be almost too good to be true," says she. "That could be made just the dearest place!" "Yes," says I; "but my job is to talk MacGregor into lettin' it go cheap, or else we can't afford to touch it." Well, I can't claim it was all my smooth work that did the trick, for MacGregor had bought the place at a bargain first off, and now he was anxious to unload. Still, he hadn't been born north of Glasgow for nothing. But the figures Mr. Robert said would be about right I managed to shade by twenty per cent., and my lump invoice of that old mahogany of ours maybe was a bit generous. Anyway, when I goes home that night I tosses Vee a long envelop. "What's this?" says she. "That's your chicken permit," says I. "All aboard for Lilac Lodge! Gee! I wonder should I grow whiskers, livin' out there?" CHAPTER VI TORCHY IN THE GAZINKUS CLASS I expect I'll get used to it all in time. This rural stuff, I mean. But it ain't goin' to come easy. When you've been brought up to think of home as some place where you've got a right to leave your trunk as long as you pay the rent prompt,--a joint where you have so many square feet of space on a certain floor, and maybe eight or ten inches of brick and plaster between you and a lot of strangers,--and then all of a sudden you switch to a whole house that's all yours, with gobs of land all around it, and trees and bushes and things that you can do what you like with--well, it's sort of staggerin' at first. Why, the day Vee and I moved into this Harbor Hills place that I'd made the swift trade for with MacGregor Shinn, we just had our baggage dumped in the middle of the livin'-room, chucked our wraps on some chairs, and went scoutin' around from one room to another for over an hour, kind of nutty and excited.