“It’s the only way to do things,” said Cardross again and again; “make up your mind quickly that you want to do them, then do them quickly.  I have no patience with a man who’ll dawdle about a bit of property for years and finally start to improve it with a pot of geraniums after he’s too old to enjoy anything except gruel.  When I plant a tree I don’t plant a sapling; I get a machine and four horses and a dozen men and I put in a full-grown tree so that I can sit under it next day if I wish to and not spend thirty years waiting for it to grow.  Isn’t that the way to do things, Hamil?”

Hamil said yes.  It was certainly the way to accomplish things—­the modern millionaire’s way; but the majority of people had to do a little waiting before they could enjoy their vine and fig-tree.

Cardross sat down beside his wife, who was reading in a hammock chair, and gazed at the new vista through a pair of field-glasses.

“Gad, Hamil!” he said with considerable feeling, “I hate to see a noble tree go down; it’s like murder to me.  But it’s the only thing to do, isn’t it?  The French understand the value of magnificent distances.  What a glorious vista that will make, four miles straight away walled in by deathless green, and the blue lagoon sparkling at the end of the perspective!  I love it, I tell you.  I love it!”

“It will be very fine,” said Hamil.  His voice sounded a trifle tired.  He had ridden many miles since sunrise.  There was marl on his riding-breeches.

Cardross continued to examine the work in progress through his binoculars.  Presently he said: 

“You’ve been overdoing it, haven’t you, Hamil?  My wife says so.”

“Overdoing it?” repeated the young man, not understanding.  “Overdoing what?”

“I mean you’ve a touch of malaria; you’ve been working a little too hard.”

“He has indeed,” drawled Mrs. Cardross, laying aside her novel; and, placidly ignoring Hamil’s protests:  “Neville, you drag him about through those dreadful swamps before he is acclimated, and you keep him up half the night talking plans and making sketches.  He is too young to work like that.”

Hamil turned red; but it was impossible to resent or mistake the kindly solicitude of this very large and leisurely lady whose steadily increasing motherly interest in him had at times tried his dignity in that very lively family.

That he was already a successful young man with a metropolitan reputation made little or no impression upon her.  He was young, alone, and she liked him better and better every day until that liking arrived at the point where his physical welfare began to preoccupy her.  So she sent maids to his room with nourishing broths at odd and unexpected moments, and she presented him with so many boxes of quinine that their disposal became a problem until Shiela took them off his hands and replaced them in her mother’s medicine chest, whence, in due time, they returned again as gifts to Hamil.