"Do you wonder I want to live here?"

"Not a bit. The idea of it grows more attractive to me every time I come
here. If it were any place but yours, I should be strongly tempted to
buy it myself--mother and I, of course, I mean. She would jump at the
idea, I fancy, of this for a summer home."

"Oh, Jarvis!" Sally looked so dismayed that he reassured her in haste:

"Of course I'd never mention such a thing unless you yourself wanted to
sell. But you can see I'm in sympathy with your longing to live here. I
only wish I could see you carry out your plan. If there were anything I
could do to bring it about, I certainly would do it. Look here." He
paused to consider an idea which had just occurred to him. "Do you
suppose if I were seriously to talk of buying the place it might make Max
want to keep it? By all the laws of human nature, the thing ought to work
that way."

"I don't know. You never know how Max is going to take things. If you
offered a good price he might jump at it."

"I wouldn't offer a good price--that is, not the price I would give if I
were very anxious to get it."

Sally thought it over. "I don't know," she said again. "You told me you
were thinking of offering to rent a few acres of us and try some market
gardening."

"I have thought of that. If I could only get 'the leader of the
opposition' interested to go in with me, your case would be won."