cattering hillsides, that it would be an undying shame to have it
shattered by the very people that the others regard with hopeless envy.

Shame on you, Barbara, but you are growing bitter. Yes, I know you do
not yourself mind left-handed snubs and remarks about your being
"comfortably poor," but you won't have that splendid old father of yours
put upon and sneezed at, with cigarette sneezes, too. You should realize
that they don't know any better, also that presently they may become
dreadfully bored after the manner of degenerates and move away from the
Bluffs, and then companionable, commuting, or summer resident people will
have a chance to buy their houses.

Shrewd Martha Corkle foresaw the probable outcome the day that the
foundation-stone for the first cottage was laid, even before our
prettiest flower-hedged lane was shorn and torn up to make it into a
macadam road, in order to shorten the time, for motor vehicles, between
the Bluffs and the station by possibly three minutes. Not that the people
were obliged to be on time for early trains, for they are mostly the
reapers of other people's sowing; but to men of a certain calibre, born
for activity, the feeling that, simply for the pleasure of it, they can
wait until the very latest moment and still get there, is an amusement
savouring of both chance and power.

"Yes, Mrs. Evan," said Martha, with as much of a sniff as she felt
compatible with her dignity, "I knows colernies of folks not born to or
loving the soil, but just trying to get something temporary out o' it in
the way o' pleasure, as rabbits, or mayhap bad smelling water for the
rheumatics. (It was the waters Lunnon swells came for down on the old
estate.) To my thinkin' these pleasure colernies is bad things; they
settles as senseless as a swarm of bees, just because their leader's lit
there first; and when they've buzzed themselves out and moved on, like as
not some sillies as has come gapin' too close is bit fatal or poisoned
for life."

Well-a-day! Evan says that I take things to heart that belong to the head
alone, while father says that, to his mind, feeling is much more of a
need to-day than logic; so what can I do but still stumble along
according to feeling.

A shout from beneath the window, then a soft snowball on it, the signal
that the fort is finished,--yes, and the old Christmas tree stuck up top
as a standard. Richard has built a queer-looking snow man with red knobs
all over his chest