was by no means so
glowing as it once would have been. For I had seen visions, I had
dreamed dreams, beheld a delectable country of my very own. A
year ago--nay, even a month ago--how such an invitation would have
glittered!... I returned at length to my theme, over which, before
Jerry's arrival, I had been working feverishly. But now the glamour had
gone from it.

Presently Tom came in.

"Anyone been here?" he demanded.

"Jerry," I told him.

"What did he want?"

"He wanted me to go home with him at Easter."

"You're going, of course."

"I don't know. I haven't decided."

"You'd be a fool not to," was Tom's comment. It voiced, succinctly, a
prevailing opinion.

It was the conclusion I arrived at in my own mind. But just why I had
been chosen for the honour, especially at such a time, was a riddle.
Jerry's invitations were charily given, and valued accordingly; and more
than once, at our table, I had felt a twinge of envy when Conybear or
someone else had remarked, with the proper nonchalance, in answer to a
question, that they were going to Weathersfield. Such was the name of
the Kyme place....

I shall never forget the impression made on me by the decorous luxury
of that big house, standing amidst its old trees, halfway up the gentle
slope that rose steadily from the historic highway where poor Andre was
captured. I can see now the heavy stone pillars of its portico vignetted
in a flush of tenderest green, the tulips just beginning to flame forth
their Easter colours in the well-kept beds, the stately, well-groomed
evergreens, the vivid lawns, the clipped hedges. And like an
overwhelming wave of emotion that swept all before it, the
impressiveness of wealth took possession of me. For here was a kind of
wealth I had never known, that did not exist in the West, nor even in
the still Puritan environs of Boston where I had visited. It took itself
for granted, proclaimed itself complacently to have solved all problems.
By ignoring them, perhaps. But I was too young to guess this. It was
order personified, gaining effect at every turn by a multitude of
details too trivial to mention were it not for the fact that they
entered deeply into my consciousness, until they came to represent,
collectively, the very flower of achievement. It was a wealth that
accepted tribute calmly, as of inherent right. Law and tradition
defended its sanctity more effectively than troops. Literature descended
from her high altar to l