ion for a
filial visit to my mother and a grudging journey to North Carolina,
where I stared uncomprehendingly at the chaotic hospital, a litter of
bricks and scantling, listened to tiresome and enthusiastic statistics
from young Collier and Dr. McGee, distributed papers of sweets to a
ward of convalescent and sticky infants, and refused to take a
toilsome journey around the borders of my one-time coal-lands. They
were no longer mine--why should I care to view them?

Just before I left for Paris, where Captain Upgrove was to join me, I
remembered some drawings I had planned to make in order to get the
dimensions of the rambling, old-fashioned garden behind the house where I
intended to put a certain ancient shallow stone basin I had in mind, and
then beg Roger to pipe the spring into it for a sort of fountain-pool.
There was such a basin on an old, decaying estate some miles out of our old
school-town: Roger and I knew it well, for we had often been invited there
by a friend of my mother's to drink tea and eat rusk and fresh butter and
_confiture_ (of field strawberries--delicious!) and--of all things--broiled
bacon, because Roger was devotedly fond of it and never got it at school.
How many June half-holidays have we hung over that old carved basin,
teasing the goldfish, stopping up the tiny fountain till it spouted all
over us, sailing beetles across it on linden leaves, or lolling full-fed
and lazy, smoking contraband cigarettes of caporal! I knew well how pleased
he would be when he saw that battered dolphin that threw the water and the
funny little stone frogs at each corner, and I had a shrewd idea that old
Mrs. Y---- would not object to parting with it, moss and lichen and all, if
one made it worth her while!

A cold, rainy week--the delayed equinox--caught and held me on the
island, huddled over the fire, and it was then that I conceived the
famous idea of the furnace. I had planned many a pleasant autumn
there, for it was now the best of America to me, and if such weeks as
this were possible (and probable) there would be little comfort for me
away from the chimney corner--which has never been my favourite post,
by the way. Caliban and Agnes, the cook, a kindly Normandy woman, did
their best for me and for the ravenous gang of workmen that laboured
(in the slight intervals between their meals!) at the monstrous,
many-mouthed iron tube in the cellar; while I chafed and scolded at
the delays, unwilling to leave t