there is something in that. But I had
supposed that you girls had a sentiment for this old place," he added
almost reproachfully.

"And so we have!" Martie answered quickly. "But it is one thing to sell
this place in small lots, Pa, and have it chopped into shops and
shanties, and another to have a three-hundred-thousand-dollar building
go in here. The new High School on the old Monroe place; you'll admit
there's a great difference?"

Had her bombastic father always been so easily influenced? Martie
wondered, remembering the old storms and the old stubbornness. It was
true, some persons couldn't do things; other persons could. Lydia and
Ma would have goaded him into an obstinacy that no later judgment could
dispel, and after his death Monroe would have lamented that he had left
next to nothing, for the place had to go for taxes and interest
overdue, and Lydia and Ma would have settled themselves comfortably on
Len for life.

"All the difference in the world," Malcolm said, now deep in thought.

"You could send a letter to the Zeus," Martie added presently, "saying
that you had never even considered such a step before, but that to sell
for educational purposes was--you know!--was in accord with the spirit
of your father--that sort of thing!"

"And so it was!" he answered warmly.

"A few ready thousands would be the making of the Estates, now," said
Martie, "but naturally the town need know nothing of that!"

Malcolm shrugged a careless assent, and silently finished his pie.

"Your sister Lydia--" he began suddenly, shaking his head.

"Yes, Lyd will object," Martie assented, as his voice stopped. "Lyd is
a conservative, Pa. She has very little of the spirit that brought
Grandfather Monroe here; she doesn't, in the Estates, see property that
will be just as beautiful and just as valuable as anything in Monroe in
a few years. Why, Pa, you must remember the days when our trees in the
yard here were only saplings?"

"Remember?" he echoed impressively. "Why, I remember Monroe as the
field between two sheep-ranches. There was not a blade of wheat, not a
fruit tree--"

He was well started. Martie listened to an hour's complacent
reminiscence. At eight o'clock he went to his study, but came back a
moment later, with his glasses pushed up on his lead-coloured forehead,
to say that the sum old Tait mentioned would clear the mortgage, build
a handsome house, and perhaps leave a bit over for Martie and her boy.
At nine