He was a dried-up, sentimental
little man, with two loves, his wife's memory and his wife's garden,
which he still tended religiously between customers; and one
ambition, his son. With the change from common to park, and the
improvement in the neighborhood, he began to flourish, and he, too,
like Anthony, dreamed a dream. He would make his son a gentleman,
and he would get a shop assistant and a horse and wagon. Poverty
was still his lot, but there were good times coming. He saved
carefully, and sent Jim Doyle away to college.
He would not sell to Anthony. When he said he could not sell his
wife's garden, Anthony's agents reported him either mad or deeply
scheming. They kept after him, offering much more than the land was
worth. Doyle began by being pugnacious, but in the end he took to
brooding.
"He'll get me yet," he would mutter, standing among the white phlox
of his little back garden. "He'll get me. He never quits."
Anthony Cardew waited a year. Then he had the frame building
condemned as unsafe, and Doyle gave in. Anthony built his house.
He put a brick stable where the garden had been, and the night
watchman for the property complained that a little man, with wild
eyes, often spent half the night standing across the street, quite
still, staring over.
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