CHAPTER III

THE DAWN OF A GREAT ENTERPRISE


The great enterprise was sprung on Mr. Merrick the very morning
following his arrival at the farm. Breakfast was over and a group had
formed upon the shady front lawn, where chairs, benches and hammocks
were scattered in profusion.

"Well, Uncle, how do you like it?" asked Louise. "Are you perfectly
comfortable and happy, now we've escaped so far from the city that its
humming life is a mere memory?"

"Happy as a clam," responded Uncle John, leaning back in his chair with
his feet on a foot rest. "If I only had the morning paper there would be
nothing else to wish for."

"The paper? That's what that queer tramp at the Junction House asked
for," remarked Beth. "The first thought of even a hobo was for a
morning paper. I wonder why men are such slaves to those gossipy
things."

"Phoo!" cried Patsy; "we're all slaves to them. Show me a person who
doesn't read the daily journals and keep abreast of the times and I'll
show you a dummy."

"Patsy's right," remarked Arthur Weldon. "The general intelligence and