see--"
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Turner," interrupted Miss Westlake gaily; "I
know you'll want to meet all the young folks, and you'll particularly
want to meet my very dearest friend. Miss Hastings, Mr. Turner."
Mr. Turner had turned to find an extraordinarily thin young woman,
with extraordinarily piercing black eyes, at Miss Westlake's side.
"Indeed, I do want to meet all the young people," he cordially asserted,
taking Miss Hastings' claw-like hand in his own and wondering what to
do with it. He could not clasp it and he could not shake it. She relieved
him of his dilemma, after a moment, by twining that arm about the
plump waist of her dearest friend.
"Is this your first stay at Meadow Brook?" she asked by way of starting
conversation. She was very carefully vivacious, was Miss Hastings, and
had a bird-like habit, meant to be very fetching, of cocking her head to
one side as she spoke, and peering up to men--oh, away up--with the
beady expression of a pet canary.
"My very first visit," confessed Mr. Turner, not yet realizing the
disgrace it was to be "new people" at Meadow Brook, where there was
always an aristocracy of the grandchildren of original Meadow
Brookers. "However, I hope it won't be the last time," he continued.
"We shall all hope that, I am certain," Miss Westlake assured him,
smiling engagingly into the depths of his eyes. "It will be our fault if
you don't like it here;" and he might take such tentative promise as he
would from that and her smile.
"Thank you," he said promptly enough. "I can see right now that I'm
going to make Meadow Brook my future summer home. It's such a
restful place, for one thing. I'm beginning to rest right now, and to put
business so far into the background that--" he suddenly stopped and
listened to a phrase which his trained ear had caught.
"And that is the trouble with the whole paper business," Mr. Princeman
was saying to Mr. Westlake. "It is not the tariff, but the future scarcity
of wood-pulp material."
"That's just what I was starting to explain to you," said Mr. Turner,
wheeling eagerly to Mr. Princeman, entirely unaware, in his intensity
of interest, of his utter rudeness to both groups. "My kid brother and
myself are working on a scheme which, if we are on the right track,
ought to bring about a revolution in the paper business. I can not give
you the exact details of it now, because we're waiting for letters patent
on it, but the fundamental point is this: that the wood-pulp
manufacturers within a few years will have to grow their raw material,
since wood is becoming so scarce and so high priced. Well, there is any
quantity of swamp land available, and we have experimented like mad
with reeds and rushes. We've found one particular variety which grows
very rapidly, has a strong, woody fiber, and makes the finest pulp in the
world. I turned the kid loose with the company's bank roll this spring,
and he secured options on two thousand acres of swamp land, near to
transportation and particularly adapted to this culture, and dirt cheap
because it is useless for any other purpose. As soon as the patents are
granted on our process we're going to organize a million dollar stock
company to take up more land and handle the business."
"Come over here and sit down," invited Princeman, somewhat more
than courteously.
"Wait a minute until I send for McComas. Here, boy, hunt Mr.
McComas and ask him to come out on the porch."
The new guest was reaching for pencil and paper as they gathered their
chairs together. The two girls had already started hesitantly to efface
themselves. Half-way across the lawn they looked sadly toward the
porch again. That handsome young Mr. Turner, his back toward them,
was deep in formulated but thrilling facts, while three other heads, one
gray and one black and one auburn, were bent interestedly over the
envelope upon which he was figuring.
Later on, as he was dressing for dinner, Mr. Turner decided that he
liked Meadow Brook very much. It was set upon the edge of a pleasant,
rolling valley, faced and backed by some rather high hills, upon the
sloping side of one of which the hotel was built, with broad verandas
looking out upon exquisitely kept flowers and shrubbery and upon the
shallow little brook which gave the place its name. A little more water
would have suited Sam better, but the management had made the most
of its opportunities, especially in the matter of arranging dozens of
pretty little lovers' lanes leading in all directions among the trees and
along the sides of the shimmering stream, and
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