of
important business. As we strolled through the gateway we were met by a
sturdy little boy with tousled hair. He had on an enormous gray sweater
and was hugging a pigskin.

"We beat 'em!" he shouted, unabashed by my obviously friendly presence.
"Eighteen to nothing!"

"Tom is twelve," said Hastings with a shade of pride in his voice. "Yes,
the schools here are good. I expect to have him ready for college in
five years more."

"What are you going to make of him?" I asked.

"A civil engineer, I think," he answered. "You see, I'm a crank on fresh
air and building things--and he seems to be like me. This cooped-up city
life is pretty narrowing, don't you think?"

"It's fierce!" I returned heartily, with more warmth than elegance.
"Sometimes I wish I could chuck the whole business and go to farming."

"Why not?" he asked as we climbed a small rise behind the house. "Here's
my farm--fifteen acres. We raise most of our own truck."

Below the hill a cornfield, now yellow with pumpkins, stretched to the
farther road. Nearer the house was a kitchen garden, with an apple
orchard beyond. A man in shirtsleeves was milking a cow behind a tiny
barn.

"I bought this place three years ago for thirty-nine hundred dollars,"
said my stenographer. "They say it is worth nearer six thousand now.
Anyhow it is worth a hundred thousand to me!"

A little girl, with bulging apron, appeared at the edge of the orchard
and came running toward us.

"What have you got there?" called her father.

"Oh, daddy! Such lovely chestnuts!" cried the child. "And there are
millions more of them!"

"We'll roast 'em after supper," said her father. "Toddle along now and
wash up."

She put up a rosy, beaming face to be kissed and dashed away toward the
house. I tried to remember what either of my two girls had been like at
her age, but for some strange reason I could not.

Across the road the fertile countryside sloped away into a distant
valley, hemmed in by dim blue hills, below which the sun had already
sunk, leaving only a gilded edge behind. The air was filled with a soft,
smoky haze. A church bell in the village struck six o'clock.

"_The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way_,"

I murmured.

"For 'plowman' read 'golfer,'" smiled my host. "By George, though--it is
pretty good to be alive!" The air had turned crisp and we both
instinctively t