he moldings and one scarcely noticed them
until the soft light they threw on the table got stronger.

Then Carrie remarked that Mrs. Winter was talking, and Bernard laughed.
She had wondered whether she ought to give her mother a hint, and might
have done so, for Jim's sake, although it would have hurt her pride;
but she was glad she had not. Bernard Dearham did not smile politely,
as Mrs. Mordaunt smiled; he laughed because he was amused. Carrie did
not know much about English people, but the dinner was obviously a
formal acknowledgment of the new owner of Langrigg; and she studied her
host. She had at first remarked a puzzling likeness to somebody she
knew, and now she saw it was Jim. The likeness was rather in Bernard's
voice and manner than his face, although she found it there. Then he
looked up and asked:

"Do you like Dryholm?"

"Oh, yes," said Carrie. "Almost as much as I like Langrigg."

Bernard smiled and nodded. "Langrigg has a touch that only time can
give. A house matures slowly."

"I think that is so," Carrie agreed. "One feels it in England. A
house matures by being used; the people who live there give it a stamp,
and perhaps when they go they leave an influence. It's different in
Canada. When our houses get out of date, we pull them down."

Bernard looked at her rather keenly. He was a shrewd judge of men and
women and saw that she could think.

"You are something of a sentimentalist; I don't know if you are right
or not. When I built Dryholm we tried to get the feeling Langrigg
gives one, as far as it could be expressed by line. But do you like
Whitelees?"

"Whitelees is pretty," Carrie replied with caution.

Bernard's eyes twinkled. "Very pretty. Something new, in fact, after
Canada?"

"Yes," said Carrie, who saw he wanted her to talk. She knew he was
studying her, but he was not antagonistic like Mordaunt and Mrs.
Halliday. "This is why I'd sooner have Langrigg, because I don't find
Langrigg new in the way you mean," she resumed. "One gets the feeling
you talk about in Canada; not in our houses but in the woods. They're
different from the woods you have planted and trimmed. The big black
pines grow as they want; sometimes they're charred by fire and smashed
by gales. When it's quiet you hear the rivers and now and then a
snowslide rolling down the hills."

"Rugged and stern? Well, I imagine the men who built Langrigg long
since were rather like your pioneers."