It was here that McDowell stepped forward; he cynically acknowledged that religion must be made to play into the hands of business, and he justified himself to himself by many good arguments. The details of the new dispensation were arranged in a down-town office. McDowell had tried to contrive that that office should be Ingles's own; but the meeting was held, after all, in another tall tower a block or two down the street, and Ingles himself was not present more than ten minutes. McDowell regretted this; he felt very well disposed towards Ingles. He would have done almost anything for him--for a commission.
But McDowell did not push this choir matter to the neglect of his own proper business. He was engaged at about this time with a new subdivision out beyond the South Parks. He had bought up a ten-acre tract, which he himself acknowledged to be rather low-lying, and which his rivals, with an unusual disregard of the courtesies of the profession, did not hesitate to call an out-and-out swamp. He had mended matters somewhat by means of a dam and a sluice, which drained off a part of his moisture on to grounds lying lower still--other men's grounds; and on the driest and most accessible corner of his domain he had placed a portable one-story frame shanty which had already done duty on other subdivisions, and alongside of it stood a tall flagpole which flaunted a banner with his own name and number on it. This tract, by the way, had absorbed some moderate portion of Ann Wilde's hoarded savings.
A week of rainy weather now and then would lay a complete embargo on McDowell's operations in this quarter. His plank walks would float off in sections; the trees along his avenues would sag deeply into the slush and would sway sidewise, in spite of their networks of rusty wire; and the cellars of the three or four unfinished houses that he had artfully scattered through this promising tract would show odds and ends of carpenters' refuse floating around in muddy water a foot deep. It was an appalling spectacle to one who realized the narrow margins upon which many of these operations were conducted, or who failed to keep in mind the depths that human folly and credulity may sound.