's
interest had waned. Not that she cared for the Guernseys, or Jerseys,
or whatever they may have been; she evinced a sudden passion for
simplicity,--occasional simplicity, at least,--for a contrast to and
escape from a complicated life of luxury. She built another house for
the superintendent banished him from the little farmhouse (where Ham had
kept two rooms); banished along with the superintendent the stiff plush
furniture, the yellow-red carpets, the easels and the melodeon, and
decked it out in bright chintzes, with wall-papers to match, dainty
muslin curtains, and rag-carpet rugs on the hardwood floors. The
pseudo-classic porch over the doorway, which had suggested a cemetery,
was removed, and a wide piazza added, furnished with wicker lounging
chairs and tables, and shaded with gay awnings.

Here, to the farm, accompanied by a maid, she had been in the habit
of retiring from time to time, and here she came in early July. Here,
dressed in the simplest linen gowns of pink or blue or white, I found a
Nancy magically restored to girlhood,--anew Nancy, betraying only traces
of the old, a new Nancy in a new Eden. We had all the setting, all the
illusion of that perfect ideal of domesticity, love in a cottage. Nancy
and I, who all our lives had spurned simplicity, laughed over the joy
we found in it: she made a high art of it, of course; we had our simple
dinners, which Mrs. Olsen cooked and served in the open air; sometimes
on the porch, sometimes under the great butternut tree spreading its
shade over what in a more elaborate country-place, would have been
called a lawn,--an uneven plot of grass of ridges and hollows that ran
down to the orchard. Nancy's eyes would meet mine across the little
table, and often our gaze would wander over the pastures below, lucent
green in the level evening light, to the darkening woods beyond,
gilt-tipped in the setting sun. There were fields of ripening yellow
grain, of lusty young corn that grew almost as we watched it: the
warm winds of evening were heavy with the acrid odours of fecundity.
Fecundity! In that lay the elusive yet insistent charm of that country;
and Nancy's, of course, was the transforming touch that made it
paradise. It was thus, in the country, I suggested that we should spend
the rest of our existence. What was the use of amassing money, when
happiness was to be had so simply?

"How long do you think you could stand it?" she asked, as she handed me
a plate of