“The spider,” said Baker.  “He’s onto us big as a house.  He can spot a yap at four hundred yards’ range, and you bet they don’t get much nearer than that alone.”

A huge sign shrieked of Maudsley Court.  “Get a grin!” was its first advice.

“They all try for a catchword—­every one of ’em,” explained Baker.  “You’ll see all kinds in the ads; some pretty good, most of ’em rotten.”

“They seem to have made a start, anyway,” observed Bob, indicating a new cottage half way down the street.  It was a super-artistic structure, exhibiting the ends of huge brown beams at all points.  Baker laughed.

“That’s what it’s intended to seem,” said he.  “That’s the come-on house.  It’s built by the spider.  It’s stick-um for the flies.  ’This is going to be a high-brow proposition,’ says the intending purchaser; ’look at the beautiful house already up.  I must join this young and thriving colony.’  Hence this settled look.”

He waved his hand abroad.  Dotted over the low, rounded hills of the charming landscapes were new and modern bungalows.  They were spaced widely, and each was flanked by an advertising board and guarded by a pair of gates shutting their private thoroughfares from the country highways.  Between them showed green the new crops.

“Nine out of ten come-on houses,” said Baker, “and all exclusive.  If you can’t afford iron gates, you can at least put up a pair of shingled pillars.  It’s the game.”

“Will these lots ever be sold?” asked Bob.

“Out here, yes,” replied Baker.  “That’s part of the joke.  The methods are on the blink, but the goods insist on delivering themselves.  Most of these fellows are just bunks or optimists.  All hands are surprised when things turn out right.  But if all the lots are ever sold, Los Angeles will have a population of five million.”

They boarded an inward-bound trolley.  Bob read the devices as they flashed past.  “Hill-top Acres,” he read near a street plastered against an apparently perpendicular hill.  “Buy before the rise!” advised this man’s rival at its foot.  The true suburbs strung by in a panorama of strange little houses—­imitation Swiss chalets jostling bastard Moorish, cobblestones elbowing plaster—­a bewildering succession of forced effects.  Baker caught Bob’s expression.

“These are workingmen’s and small clerks’ houses,” he said quietly.  “Pretty bad, eh?  But they’re trying.  Remember what they lived in back East.”

Bob recalled the square, painted, ugly, featureless boxes built all after the same pattern of dreariness.  He looked on this gay bewilderment of bad taste with more interest.

“At least they’re taking notice,” said Baker, lighting his pipe.  “And every fellow raises some kind of posies.”

A few moments later they plunged into the vortex of the city and the smiling country, the far plains toward the sea, and the circle of the mountains were lost.  Only remained overhead the blue of the California sky.