“As a matter of fact,” Harlan explained, a little annoyed, “he didn’t ask me for help, but he did want me to go in with him on strictly business grounds. He was certain that if I joined him as a partner, it would be a great thing for both of us. He wanted me to do the same thing he did—invest what grandfather left me in making the Ornaby farm blossom with horrible bungalows and corner drug stores.” “And you wouldn’t,” Martha said affirmatively. “Why should I, since I don’t believe in his scheme?” “But why couldn’t you believe in Dan himself?” “Good heavens!” Harlan exclaimed, and uttered a sound of impatient laughter. “I’ve never looked upon Dan as precisely a genius, Martha. Besides, even if by a miracle he could do something of what he dreams he can, what on earth would be the use of it? It would only be an extension of ugliness into a rather inoffensive landscape. I don’t believe he can do it in the first place; and in the second, I don’t believe in doing it even if it can be done.” “Don’t you?” she asked, and looked at him thoughtfully. “What do you believe in, Harlan?” “A number of things,” he said gravely. “For instance, I don’t believe in kicking up a lot of dust and confusion to turn a nice old farm into horrible-looking lots with hideous signboards blaring all over ’em.” “How characteristic!” “What is?” “I asked you what you believed in,” she explained. “You said you believed in ‘a number of things,’ and went straight on: ‘For instance, I don’t believe——’” “Yes,” he said, “I was keeping to the argument about Dan.” Martha laughed at his calm sophistry, but was content to seem to accept it and to waive her point. “What do your father and mother think of ‘Ornaby Addition’?” “Oh, you know them! They understand as well as anybody that it’s all folly, but they don’t say so to Dan. I think poor father would even put something in just to please Dan, if he could spare it after what he’s lost in bad loans this year.” “How about Mrs. Savage?” “Grandmother!” Harlan was amused at this suggestion. “Dan has to keep away from her; she’s taken such a magnificently healthy prejudice against his little Miss McMillan she won’t talk to him about anything else, and Dan can’t stand it. Not much chance for ‘Ornaby’ there, Martha!” “No; she _is_ a plaster of Paris old thing!” “Inordinately. She’s always been set about _me_, Martha,” Harlan remarked with a ruefulness in which there was a measure of philosophic amusement. “She’s always maintained that I’d never amount to anything—I have the terrible faults of being an egotist and smoking cigarettes—but she’s sometimes admitted she thought Dan might. That’s why she’s furious with him about throwing himself away on this ‘spoiled ninny of a photograph girl’—her usual way of referring to Miss McMillan. Grandmother’s twice as furious with him as if she hadn’t always been like you, Martha.” “Like me? How?”