So she
coldly vetoed Pike's proposed system of fortifications, and
announced that they would descend upon the world, and gyrate socially.
And thus, at length, it was decided, and the thing done. The village
of Laurel was their compromise between Mrs. Garvey's preference for
one of the large valley towns and Pike's hankering for primeval
solitudes. Laurel yielded a halting round of feeble social
distractions comportable with Martella's ambitions, and was not
entirely without recommendation to Pike, its contiguity to the
mountains presenting advantages for sudden retreat in case fashionable
society should make it advisable.
Their descent upon Laurel had been coincident with Yancey Goree's
feverish desire to convert property into cash, and they bought the old
Goree homestead, paying four thousand dollars ready money into the
spendthrift's shaking hands.
Thus it happened that while the disreputable last of the Gorees
sprawled in his disreputable office, at the end of his row, spurned by
the cronies whom he had gorged, strangers dwelt in the halls of his
fathers.
A cloud of dust was rolling, slowly up the parched street, with
something travelling in the midst of it. A little breeze wafted the
cloud to one side, and a new, brightly painted carryall, drawn by a
slothful gray horse, became visible.
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