"I wonder if it is coquetry on her part," thought I, as I went back with the fan. "I wonder if it will cause things to go wrong in our business affairs. I wonder if it is possible for her to be sincerely unable to make up her mind, or if there is anything in Alice's malign-influence theory. Anyhow, in the department of Cupid business certainly is picking up!"
Some Things which Happened in Our Halcyon Days.
If there was any tension among us just after the house-warming, it was not noticeable. Mr. Cornish and Mr. Elkins seemed unaware of their rivalry. Had either of the two been successful, it might have made mischief; but as it was, neither felt that his rejection was more than temporary. Neither knew much of the other's suit, and both seemed full of hope and good spirits.
Altogether, these were our halcyon days. It seemed to crew and captain a time for the putting off of armor, and the donning of the garlands of complacent respite from struggle. The work we had undertaken seemed accomplished--our village was a city. The great wheel we had set whirling went spinning on with power. Long ago we had ceased to treat the matter jocularly; and to regard our operations as applied psychology only, or as a piratical reunion, no longer occurred to us. There is such a thing, I believe, as self-hypnotism; but if we knew it, we made no application of our knowledge to our own condition. This great, scattered, ebullient town, grown from the drowsy Lattimore of a few years ago, must surely be, even now, what we had willed it to be: and therefore, could we not pause and take our ease?
There was the General, of course. He, Jim said, "'knocked' so constantly as to be sort of ex-officio President of the Boiler-makers' Union," and talked of the inevitable collapse. But who ever heard of a city built by people of his way of thinking? And there was Josie Trescott, with her agreement on broad lines with the General, and her deprecation of the giving of fortunes to people who had not earned them; but Josie was only a woman, who, to be sure, knew more of most matters than the rest of us, but could not have any very valuable knowledge of the prospects for commercial prosperity.
That we were in the midst of an era of the most wonderful commercial prosperity none denied. How could they? The streets, so lately bordered with low stores, hotels, and banks, were now craggy with tall office buildings and great hostelries, through which the darting elevators shot hurrying passengers. Those trees which made early twilight in the streets that night when Alice, Jim, and I first rode out to the Trescott farm were now mostly cut down to make room for "improvements."