Then is when the salaried-folk read avidly the real-estate advertisements, and pore optimistically over folders and dream of chicken ranches and fruit ranches and the like.

Surely, then, the homeseekers' Syndicate planned well the date of their excursion into the land of large promise (and problematical fulfillment) which lay east of Dry Lake.
Rumors of the excursion seeped through the channels of gossip and set the town talking and chuckling and speculating--after the manner of very small towns.
Rumors grew to definite though erroneous statements of what was to take place.

Definite statements became certified facts that bore fruit in detailed arrangements.
Came Florence Grace Hallman smilingly from Great Falls, to canvass the town for "accommodations." Florence Grace Hallman was a capable woman and a persuasive one, though perhaps a shade too much inclined to take certain things for granted--such as Andy's anchored interest in her and her project, and the probability of the tract remaining just as it had been when last she went carefully over the plat in the land office.
Florence Grace Hallman had been busy arranging the details of the coming of the colony, and she had neglected to visit the land office lately.

Since she cannily represented the excursion as being merely a sight-seeing trip--or some such innocuous project--she failed also to receive any inkling of recent settlements.
On a certain sunny morning in mid-May, the Happy Family stood upon the depot platform and waited for the westbound passenger, that had attached to it the special car of the homeseekers' Syndicate.

The Happy Family had been very busy during the past three weeks.