an answer.

"Would you rather I did things like that?" he asked at last.

"It would be better for the world, and better for you," she
answered noncommittally.



CHAPTER XVI

All week every one in the office knew that something new and big
was afoot in Daylight's mind. Beyond some deals of no
importance, he had not been interested in anything for several
months. But now he went about in an almost unbroken brown study,
made unexpected and lengthy trips across the bay to Oakland, or
sat at his desk silent and motionless for hours. He seemed
particularly happy with what occupied his mind. At times men
came in and conferred with him--and with new faces and differing
in type from those that usually came to see him.

On Sunday Dede learned all about it. "I've been thinking a lot
of our talk," he began, "and I've got an idea I'd like to give it
a flutter. And I've got a proposition to make your hair stand
up. It's what you call legitimate, and at the same time it's the
gosh-dangdest gamble a man ever went into. How about planting
minutes wholesale, and making two minutes grow where one minute
grew before? Oh, yes, and planting a few trees, too--say several
million of them. You remember the quarry I made believe I was
looking at? Well, I'm going to buy it. I'm going to buy these