"Pretty good substitute for the affectionate sweet I thought of all the

way down from New York," said Nickols with an adorable laugh, as he

lifted the first spoonful, dripping with cream, to his mouth. Then with

the food almost bestowed he paused and looked out beyond the garden

toward the chapel, which loomed up gray and shimmering in the silver

light.

"Great heavens!" he ejaculated, and for a long minute the spoon was

poised while his eyes fairly devoured the scene spread out before him

against the background of Paradise Ridge.

"If you don't like it we can get rid of it," I said, as I poured his

drink over the ice tinkling against the side of the glass.

"Not like it!" exclaimed Nickols, as he rose with the spoonful of

dumplings dashed back into the plate. "That is the most wonderful and

beautiful landscape effect I have ever beheld. That is just what our

garden needed. I suppose I would have seen it and put some sort of a

pavilion there, but that squat and perfect old church would have been

beyond me."

"Oh, I'm glad!" I exclaimed, as he sank back on the step beside me, took

the glass from my hand, drank deeply and this time began a determined

attack upon the plate in his hand. And then as he ate I told him all

about father and his plans for the garden and his own improvement and to

what I hoped the work was leading him. But somehow I couldn't bring

myself to describe the scene which had that night been enacted in the

garden--I couldn't. "Oh, I am so glad you are not furious and will maybe

be willing to encourage him, even if it does mean to encourage the

Methodist Church and the minister thereof. You are wonderful, Nickols,"

I finished with a squeeze of his arm that very nearly jostled the cream

out of the spoon upon his gray tweed trousers.

"I'd be a wonderful ass not to take advantage of Judge Nickols Powers'

brain and money, plus Gregory Goodloe's brain and training and money

combined, to get a result that will be worth a hundred thousand dollars

to me and all the fame I can conveniently wear. Encourage 'em? Just

watch me! Only what the judge thinks will take two years can be done in

one season if we get experts down to do it, which we will. Trees two

hundred years old can be moved for a few thousand dollars, as well as

plants in bloom that would require years to transplant. I know the man

to do it: Wilkerson of White Plains. I'll telegraph him in the

morning."

"He won't interfere with--with father, will he?" I asked anxiously.

"Not a bit--he'll just make what the judge and Gregory plan for year

after next, grow and bloom there in a couple of months. Wilkerson is not

a creator, he's just nature keyed up to the nth power. And also I'll

give him for a bait the Jeffries estate I was hesitating about making a

bid for. All the big fellows are after it. Old man Jeffries has made two

barrels of money in the last ten years in oil and he is going to build

an estate up on the Hudson that will make the world gasp. I hadn't put

in a bid, but this idea of the judge's and Greg's, with the whole

village grouped about it, has given me the keynote to win the thing from

the whole bunch of American architects. He wants the village built as

well as the estate. That American garden idea will bowl him over. He's

progressively and rabidly American. The bids don't close until December,

so I'll have time to get real photographs and sketches. Me for the

reformed judge and the parson!"




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