is, a freak." To all of which mother answered
only with a silent laugh.

The carpenters came, together with a crew of stonemasons, and the old
kitchen began to move southward, giving place for the foundations of the
new dining-room. By the end of the week, the lawn was littered with
material and tools, and the frame-work was enclosed.

My mother, in her anxiety to justify the enormous outlay said, "Well,
anyhow, these improvements are not entirely for me, they will make the
house all the nicer for my New Daughter when she comes."

"That's true," I answered, "I hadn't thought of that."

"It's _time_ you thought of it. You're almost forty years old," she
replied with humorous emphasis, then she added, "I begin to think I
never _will_ see your wife."

"Just you wait," I jestingly replied. "The case is not so hopeless as
you think--I have just received a letter which gives me a 'prospect.'"

I said this merely to divert her, but she seized upon my remark with
alarming seriousness. "Read me the letter. Where does she live?--Tell me
all about her."

Being in so far I thought it could do no harm to go a little farther. I
described (still in bantering mood) my first meeting with Zulime Taft
more than five years before. I pictured her as she looked to me then,
and as she afterward appeared when I met her a second time in the home
of her sister in Chicago. "I admit that I was greatly impressed by her,"
I went on, "but just when I had begun to hope for a better
understanding, her brother Lorado chilled me with the information that
she was about to be claimed by another man. To be honest about it,
mother, I am not sure that she is interested in me even now; although
one of her friends has just written me to say that Lorado was mistaken,
and that Zulime is not engaged to any one. I am going down to visit some
friends at the camp to test the truth of this; but don't say a word
about it, for my information may be wrong."

My warning went for nothing! My confession was too exciting to be kept a
secret, and soon several of mother's most intimate friends had heard of
my expedition, and in their minds, as in hers, my early marriage was
assured. Did not the proof of it lie in the fact that I was pushing my
building with desperate haste? Was this not done in order to make room
for my bride?--No other reason was sufficient to account for the
astounding improvements which I had planned, and which were going
forward with magical rapi