Families -- Fiction; Finance, Personal -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction
They walked about the plot, a large one. At the back, beside the
garage, they could look over a small but healthy hedge to more beach,
clustered with unusual shells at low tide, and the straggling outskirts
of the village. From the front, they looked straight down a wide
tree-shaded street, that lost itself in a peaceful vista of great trees
and vine-smothered stone walls. "Holly Court" was quiet, it was
naturally isolated, it seemed to Nancy already like home.
Even now, however, Mr. Rogers would not talk terms. He drove them about
again, passing other houses, all happily and prosperously occupied. He
told Nancy about this family and that.
"What'd that house cost?" Bert would demand.
"Ah well, THAT. That belongs to Ingram, of the Ingram Thorn Coal
people, you know. I suppose Mr. Ingram has invested forty or fifty
thousand dollars in that place, in one way and another. The tennis
court--"
And so on and on. Presently they passed the pretty, unpretentious
club-house, built close to the water. A few light sails were dipping
and shaking on the bay, children were gathered in a little knot beside
an upturned canoe, on the shore. Several cars were parked on the drive
outside the club, and Nancy felt decidedly self-conscious as she and
Bert and the children walked onto the awninged porch that was the tea
room.
"Now this club belongs to the place," Mr. Rogers said, "You're buying
here--and I don't mind telling you, Mr. Bradley, that I want you to buy
here," he broke off to admit persuasively--"because you and your wife
are the sort of people we need here. You won't find anything anywhere
that is backed by the same interest, you won't. However, about the
club. Your buying here makes you a member of this club----"
"Oh, is that SO!" Nancy exclaimed, in delighted surprise.
"Oh, yes," said the agent. "The dues are merely nominal--for the upkeep
of the place."
"Of course!" said the Bradleys.
"Your dues entitle you to all the privileges of the club--I believe the
bathhouses are a little extra, but everything else is yours. You can
bring a friend here to tea, give a card party here--there are dances
and dinners all winter long."
"Mother, are we coming here to live?" asked Junior, over his chocolate.
"I don't know," Nancy answered, feeling that she could cry with
nervousness. She hardly tasted her tea, she hardly saw the men and
women that drifted to and fro. Her heart was choking her with hope and
fear, and she knew that Bert was nervous, too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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