“My evenings don’t belong to anybody, if you need them, Jamie, and you don’t have to be told that,” I answered crossly when I thought what a grand time I might have been having talking about real things with the Crag, instead of wrestling with Polk’s romantics or Sallie’s and Mr. Haley’s gush.

“Go on and tell me all about it, while I crawl after you like a worm myself,” I snapped still further.

“Well, here goes!  In the City Council meeting last night your Uncle Peter told us about the plans that they have made up at Bolivar for entertaining the C. & G. Commission, and the gloom of Polk and Lee, Ned and the rest of them could have easily been cut in blocks and used for cold storage purposes.  They are just all down and out about it and no fight left.  Of course, they all lose by the bond issue, but I can’t see that it is bad enough to knock them all out like this.  I got up in mighty wrath and—­and I have got myself into one job.  My eloquence landed me right into one large hole, and I am reaching out for a hand from you.”

“Here it is,” and I reached over and left a smear of loam across the back of his hand, while I brought away a brown circle around my wrist that the responsive grasp of his fingers left.  “Do you want me single-handed to get the bluff line chosen?”

“Not quite, but almost,” he answered with another laugh.  “You would if you tried.  I haven’t a doubt.  Do you remember the talk we had the other night about its seeming inhospitable of you not to invite the other gentlemen in the Commission over to see you when you invite Hall and his father?  And you know you had partly planned some sort of entertainment for the whole bunch.  You had the right idea at the right place, as you always do.  As you said, we don’t want Bolivar to see us with what looks like a grouch on us at their good fortune, and I think that as the Commission are all to be here as the guests of a private citizen, Glendale ought to entertain them publicly.  There is no hope to get the line for us, but I would like those men at least to see what the beauty of that bluff road would be.  The line across the river runs through the only ugly part of the valley, and while I know in the balance between dollars and scenery, scenery will go down and out, still it would be good for them to see it and at least get a vision of what might have been, to haunt them when they take their first trip through the swamps across the country there.  Now, as you are to have them anyway, I want to have the whole town entertain the whole Commission and Bolivar with what is classically called among us a barbecue-rally, the countryside to be invited.  Bolivar is going to give them a banquet, to be as near like what the Bolivarians imagine they have in New York as possible, and Mrs. Doctor Henderson is to give them a pink tea reception to which carefully chosen presentables, like you and me, are to be invited.  You remember that circus day in July?—­a rally will be like that or more so.  What do you think?”