“Sitka spruce?” said Toomey. “Sure, how do we know that’s what suits us here in Kilbride? Soil and climatic conditions, they’re very important, you know, they’d have to be gone into very carefully.”

“They have been.”

“Ay, but not in Kilbride. And anyway, who’s going to give us the land? No, gentlemen, let’s face it, our first and most basic impediment is climatic. Progress in Kilbride is impossible until we take steps to ensure that not only do we get the weather we’re entitled to, but that we seem to be getting it. I’m referring to the biased weather forecasts we’re continually being given on the wireless.”

“In what way, Mr. Toomey?” asked the County Manager, a tall, stooped, rather humorless man with dyspepsia. “I mean, I don’t recall—”

“’Tis a disgrace the way the man on the wireless always mentions centers of low pressure around this part of the country. Sure, ’twould put anyone off coming here. Now, if we didn’t have this climate business always thrust in our faces, we’d be an ideal mark for the tourists. You see, gentlemen, if we had the tourists coming to Kilbride, why, we could lay out a village green, a pitch- and-putt course, do the place up, build a decent pub, plan a whole new... a whole new...”

“Dispatch center,” said Father Conroy, unable to stomach any more.

“I beg your pardon, Father, I’m referring to the tourist trade.”

“Dispatch center!” repeated Father Conroy. “For sorting and labeling of emigrants. We’d also need a reception center for handling the new settlers.”

“What? Ah, now, Father, I’m serious.”

“So am I,” snapped Father Conroy, as the County Manager and staff tried on dutiful smiles. “What we need at the present time is a change of population. We need to bring in a complete new race of people, Germans for preference. We need to move the present lot out, lock, stock, and barrel, every mother’s son of them.”

“You will have your joke, Father.”

“I’m not joking at all, Mr. Toomey. We’re here long enough, that’s what’s wrong with us. We’re tired of the place, we need a change. Sure, even the motorcar can’t keep going, unless you change the sump oil.”

“Hee, hee, Father,” tittered the County Manager. “You’re hardly suggesting you can change us as easily as the sump oil of a car?”

“Why not?” Father Conroy confronted him savagely. “Stalin did it. He couldn’t wait generations for the idea to sink in.”

“Ah, now, Stalin, Father!” The Chief Engineer shook his head, then backed away as Father Conroy swung on him. “You don’t mean to say we’d bring the communists—”