At half-past seven the following morning he boarded the local train. In
one car he found a score of "prospects" already seated, accompanied by
half their number of the young men of the real estate office. The utmost
jocularity and humour prevailed, except in one corner where a very
earnest young man drove home the points of his argument with an
impressive forefinger. Bob dropped unobtrusively into a seat, and
prepared to enjoy his never-failing interest in the California landscape
with its changing wonderful mountains; its alternations of sage brush
and wide cultivation; its vineyards as far as the eye could distinguish
the vines; its grainfields seeming to fill the whole cup of the valleys;
its orchards wide as forests; and its desert stretches, bigger than them
all, awaiting but the vivifying touch of water to burst into
productiveness. He heard one of the salesmen expressing this.
"'Water is King,'" he was saying, quoting thus the catchword of this
particular concern. He was talking in a half-joking way, asking one or
the other how many inches of rainfall could be expected per annum back
where they came from.
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