“But, Mr. Shelby, if you’d just let me put the _facts_ before you——”
“Facts about what’s goin’ to happen ten years from now? No, sir!” The swivel-chair began to turn, making it clear that this interview had drawn to a close. “I thank you, but I can make up my own facts, if I so desire!” And the back of the chair and its occupant were offered to the view of the caller.
Dan made a final effort. “Mr. Shelby, I hope you don’t mean this for your last word on the subject, because just as sure as you’re born the day will come when——”
“Will it?” the old man interrupted; and turned his head angrily, so that his neat beard was thrust upward by his shoulder and seemed to bristle. “You go teach your grandma Savage to suck eggs,” he said with fierce mockery, “but don’t come around here any more tellin’ _me_ where I better lay my car tracks!”
“Yes, sir,” Dan said, a little depressed for the moment.
But in the hall, outside the office, he recovered his cheerfulness, and, after consulting a memorandum book, decided to call on Mr. George Howe, the president of the First National Bank. Since yesterday Dan had thought of several new things that were certain to happen within the next ten years.
NO FIGURE was more familiar to the downtown streets of those days than that of the young promoter of Ornaby Addition. Always in a hurry and usually with eyes fixed on what appeared to be something important in the distance, he had the air of a man hastening to complete a profitable transaction before traintime. Now and then, as he strode along, his coat blowing out behind him in the spring breeze, his gaze would be not upon the distance, but eagerly engaged in computations, with the aid of a shabby memorandum book and an obviously dangerous fountain pen. Moreover, the shabbiness of the memorandum book was not out of keeping with the rest of him; for here again Harlan’s sketch of his brother failed to exaggerate. Dan’s metropolitan gloss had disappeared almost in a day, and though it might make a brief reappearance upon Sundays, when he walked to church with his mother and swung the gold-topped cane as he talked earnestly to her of Ornaby Addition, yet for the rest of the week he did seem to be almost unconscious, as Harlan said, of what he wore; so much so that his mother gently scolded him about it.