"
she had said, "if I were rich. Perhaps some day some millionaire will
turn me into gold and make it true."

"Just because you are bored to death," Dalton told her, "is no reason
why you should accuse me of it."

"It isn't accusation. It's condolence. I am sorry for both of us,
George, that we can't sit there under the trees and eat out of a basket
and have spiders and ants in things and not mind it. Here we are in
the land of Smithfield hams and spoon-bread and we ate canned lobster
for lunch, and alligator pear salad."

"Baked ham and spoon-bread--for our sins?"

"It is because you and I have missed the baked ham and spoon-bread
atmosphere, that we are bored to death, Georgie. Everything in our
lives is the same wherever we go. When we are in Virginia we ought to
do as the Virginians do, and instead Oscar Waterman brings a little old
New York with him. It's Rome for the Romans, Georgie, lobsters in New
England, avocados in Log Angeles, hog and hominy here."

There were others listening now, and she was aware of her amused
audience.

"If you don't like my little old New York," Waterman said, "I'll change
it."

"No, I am going back to the real thing, Oscar. To my sky-scrapers and
subways. You can't give us those down here--not yet. Perhaps some day
there will be a system of camouflage by which no matter where we
are--in desert or mountain, we can open our windows to the Woolworth
Building on the skyline or the Metropolitan Tower, or to Diana shooting
at the stars,--and have some little cars in tunnels to run us around
your estate."

"By Jove, Jefferson nearly did it," said Waterman; "you should see the
subterranean passages at Monticello for the servants, so that the
guests could look over the grounds without a woolly head in sight."

"Great old boob, Jefferson," said Waterman's wife, Flora.

"No," Madge's eyes went out over the hills to where Monticello brooded
over great memories, "he was not a boob. He was so big that little
people like us can't focus him, Flora."

She came down from her perch. "I adore great men," she said; "when I
go back, I shall make a pilgrimage to Oyster Bay. I wonder how many of
us who weep over Greatheart's grave would have voted for him if he had
lived. In a sense we crucified him."

"Madge is serious," said Flora Waterman, "now what do you think of
that?"

"I have to be serious sometimes, Flora, to balance the rest of you.
You can be as gay as you please whe