Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/124

108 side, and beyond them were clean sidewalks. The cottages, no two alike, all in harmony, were as bright and pretty as their prototypes in Perrier's watercolours, showing shutters which were not afraid to be frankly blue and pink and tender green, lifting gay red brick chimneys, hiding behind screens of foliage or standing out boldly to catch the golden sunshine. If it seemed some bright dream-town, such in truth it was, being Beatrice's dream come true. And, like other dream-stuff, it had its flaw, woven into its fabric. Beatrice, having smiled, frowned.

The car raced on along the almost level road, whizzed by the two-story, steep-roofed, balconied edifice which, bearing no sign over its open door, needed none to instruct the newcomer that here was to be had the hospitality of the community's "inn," made its brief journey between the rows of cottages and stopped in front of the store. This time, when a storekeeper came forth after seeing who it was at his door, Beatrice was slow in giving her order. For the frown had deepened in eyes which, passing on and beyond the last of Summit City's cottages, caught but a glimpse of the unpainted, rude wall of a building that was an interloper here, a leper among the clean. It was not five hundred yards from where she sat, it alone among buildings here bore a big painted sign, and though intervening branches concealed all but a mere hint of the walls, Beatrice remembered every sprawling, defiant letter placarding it as Summit City Saloon.

Every inch of land upon which Summit City itself stood belonged to Beatrice Corliss. She had bought