e happiest mood, enjoying the earth around us,
the sky above, and ourselves most of all.

"The scenery, however, gradually became more rough and broken. Knobs
of gray gneiss, crowned by mournful cedars, intrenched upon the arable
land, and the dark-blue gleam of water appeared through the trees. Our
road, which had been approaching the Sound, now skirted the head of a
deep, irregular inlet, beyond which extended a beautiful promontory,
thickly studded with cedars, and with scattering groups of elm, oak and
maple trees. Towards the end of the promontory stood a house, with white
walls shining against the blue line of the Sound.

"'There is Arcadia, at last!' exclaimed Mr. Shelldrake.

"A general outcry of delight greeted the announcement. And, indeed, the
loveliness of the picture surpassed our most poetic anticipations. The
low sun was throwing exquisite lights across the point, painting the
slopes of grass of golden green, and giving a pearly softness to the
gray rocks. In the back-ground was drawn the far-off water-line, over
which a few specks of sail glimmered against the sky. Miss Ringtop, who,
with Eunice, Mallory, and myself, occupied one carriage, expressed her
'gushing' feelings in the usual manner:

"'Where the turf is softest, greenest,
Doth an angel thrust me on,--
Where the landscape lies serenest,
In the journey of the sun!'

"'Don't, Pauline!' said Eunice; 'I never like to hear poetry flourished
in the face of Nature. This landscape surpasses any poem in the world.
Let us enjoy the best thing we have, rather than the next best.'

"'Ah, yes!' sighed Miss Ringtop, ''tis true!

"'They sing to the ear; this sings to the eye!'

"Thenceforward, to the house, all was childish joy and jubilee. All
minor personal repugnances were smoothed over in the general exultation.
Even Abel Mallory became agreeable; and Hollins, sitting beside Mrs.
Shelldrake on the back seat of the foremost carriage, shouted to us, in
boyish lightness of heart.

"Passing the head of the inlet, we left the country-road, and entered,
through a gate in the tottering stone wall, on our summer domain. A
track, open to the field on one side, led us past a clump of deciduous
trees, between pastures broken by cedared knolls of rock, down
the centre of the peninsula, to the house. It was quite an old
frame-building, two stories high, with a gambrel roof and tall chimneys.
Two slim Lo