National Avenue by Booth Tarkington (book recommendations website .txt) 📕

“I’m not exactly certain,” Dan admitted, again applying his handkerchief to his forehead. “I think he had something to do with history before the Revolution. I don’t know just what, but anyhow they all feel it was pretty important; and you see to them, why I’m just nobody at all, and of course they must feel I’m pretty crude. It’s true, too, because I am crude compared to Lena; and for a good while her family were more or less against any such engagement. Of course, the way they think about my family is even worse than the way you think about them, grandma; and naturally she says herself they’re positive it’d be a terrible sacrifice for her to come and live out here. I mean that’s the way they look at it.”

“Of course they do,” said Mrs. Savage. “That’s the way those New York people at Saratoga thought about this part of the country. They’re just the same nowadays, I told you; they haven’t got the kind of brains that can learn anything. Does this photograph girl herself talk about what a ‘sacrifice’ it would be for her to live here?”

“Lena McMillan is a noble girl,” Dan informed her earnestly. “She feels a lot of respect for her family’s wishes, and besides she doesn’t like the idea of leavin’ New York herself; but I don’t remember her usin’ the word ‘sacrifice’ exactly. She doesn’t put it that way.”

“What about you? Do you put it that way? Do you think it would be a sacrifice for her to come and live here?”

“I?” Dan was obviously astonished to be asked such a question. “Why, my goodness!” he exclaimed, “I wouldn’t be beggin’ her to try it if I thought so, would I? If I can just get her to try it I know she’ll like it. How could anybody help likin’ it?”

“You’re pretty liable to find out how this photograph girl will help it!” his grandmother prophesied, and promptly checked him as he began to protest against her repeated definition of Lena as “this photograph girl.” She retorted, “Tut, tut!” as a snub to his protest, then inquired: “What business do you expect to go into, if you live in New York?”

“I don’t know,” he said gloomily. “I don’t see what I could do there.”

“What will you do if you stay here?”

At that he brightened instantly. “Why, I think I’ve got hold of a big idea, grandma. I began to think about it last September, and it’s been in my mind all the time I was away;⁠—I’ve been goin’ over it and workin’ it out. It’s something would make a mighty good profit for me and at the same time I think it’d be a big thing for this city.”

“Indeed?” she said. “Yes, you’re at the age when everything looks like a ‘big thing.’ Your grandfather used to talk like that when we were first married.”

“Well, he was one of this city’s most successful men, wasn’t he? He did do big things, didn’t he?”

“That was in the early days when he kept us poor,” she said, with a short laugh of extreme dryness. “He had ideas about going into things to make this a greater city, and get ‘a mighty good profit’ for himself, the way you talk now⁠—but what finally made his money was keeping out of big schemes. It was what I kept him from doing that made us well off, not what he did. We saved and went into safe things like the First National Bank stock. When it comes to you and Harlan, after I’m gone, you mustn’t ever sell that bank stock, Dan. What is this ‘big idea’ you spoke of?”

“It’s the old Ornaby farm, grandma.”

“Oh, I see,” she assented with ready satire. “Yes; this photograph girl will make a fine farmer’s wife!”

“No, she won’t,” he returned good-naturedly. “That farm lies right where this city’s bound to grow to. I want to take the money grandpa left me and buy it. Then I’ll lay it out in lots and make an Addition of it.”

“So?” she said. “That’s the ‘big idea,’ is it?”

“That’s it, grandma.”

She shook her head in pitying skepticism. “You can’t carry it out. In the first place, the town’ll never grow that far out⁠—”

“Yes, it will,” he interrupted eagerly. “Why, in three years at the longest⁠—”

“No,” she said; “it won’t. Not in three years and not in thirty. Anyhow, your grandfather only left you twenty-five thousand dollars. You’d better keep it and not throw it away, Dan.”

“I can get the Ornaby farm for seventeen thousand,” he informed her. “That’ll leave eight thousand to clear off the lots and put asphalt streets through and⁠—”

“Put asphalt streets through!” she echoed. “How many miles of asphalt streets do you expect to build with eight thousand dollars after you’ve cleared the lots and advertised enough to boom an Addition?”

“I’ve been hopin’ I’d get help on that,” he said, his colour heightening a little. “I thought maybe I could get Harlan to come in with the twenty-five thousand grandpa left him. If he does⁠—”

“He won’t. Harlan isn’t the kind to risk anything. He won’t.”

“Well, then,” Dan said, “I’ll go ahead and get other people. I’m goin’ to do it, grandma, if I have to take an ax and a shovel and a wheelbarrow out there and do it all by myself. I’ve been thinkin’ it over a long time, and I know it’s a big thing.” He laughed a little at his own enthusiasm, but again declared, with earnest determination: “Yes, ma’am! I’m goin’ to build ‘Ornaby Addition.’ ”

But his grandmother’s compassionate skepticism was not lessened. On the contrary, she asked him quietly: “You’re going to build Ornaby Addition at the same time you expect to be living in New York with this photograph girl for a wife? How do you think you’ll manage it, Dan?”

“Oh, she’ll come here,” he said. “I know she will, when I make her see