“It seems to happen faster and faster,” Martha observed. “The last time I drove out this far was in our old carriage with papa, not quite a year ago, I think; and there were dozens of vacant lots; but now there are hardly any. The asphalt wasn’t finished clear into Ornaby then, though Dan had built a fine road through. I suppose now——” “Oh, yes; now he’s got asphalt on his cross streets, too; and the southern part of Ornaby is so like this you couldn’t tell when you get into it, if it weren’t for the disasters he calls his signboards. Look at that!” As they spoke the swift car had brought them into a region where there was more vacant ground; and the little houses, nearly all of wood, were not so closely crowded. On a stretch of weedy land, rising slightly above new cement sidewalks, there smote the eye a painted wooden wall two hundred feet long. With enormous yellow words on a black background the thing not only staggered the vision of a passer-by, but seemed to bellow in his ear: “You Are Now Entering Ornaby Addition! Build a Home in Ornaby the Beautiful! Every Ornaby Buyer is an Ornaby Booster.” Beyond came a region of more bungalows: “Homes Beautiful of Ornaby the Beautiful” another bellowing signboard declared them to be; and, not blushing in the very presence of the dwellings and dwellers it thus made proclamation for, went on to insist once more upon the enthusiasm necessarily a consequence in the bosom of any one who became an “Ornaby Buyer.” There was a briskness about the place: children went busily roller-skating over the new sidewalks; clotheslines were flying their Monday white pennants on the breeze; other bungalows were noisily getting themselves built, and farther on were some white cottages;—“quite pretty,” Martha said they were. Beyond them the open spaces were broader, and the little houses more infrequent; but the asphalt street went on, with numbered white posts marking the building lots, paved cross streets running to right and left into thicket-bordered distances, and Dan’s great signboards shouting along the front of untouched acres of old forest. “You see for yourself,” Harlan said. “This _was_ beautiful before ‘Ornaby the Beautiful’ insulted the landscape. But now, with all these flimsy and dreadful bungalows and the signboards screeching at the trees——” “Yes,” she interrupted, “but he’s spared all the trees he could, even back there where the bungalows and little houses were so thick. And I noticed the people were planting shrubberies and trying to make little gardens grow. It might be really very pretty some day. And just here——” “Oh, here,” Harlan said, “where he hasn’t touched it yet, it’s well enough, of course. But you’ll find it’s only a question of time till he spoils it, though I understand he intends this to be what he calls a ’restricted residence district.’”