the very flesh that
could bring the good low earth to my senses again.

Could it be that something was changed within--that we were ready at
last? One of those Spring days, in the midst of a forenoon's work, I
stopped short with the will to go to the country to look for a place to
rent. I left the garret, found Penelope, who was ready in fifteen
minutes. We crossed the river first of all into Canada, because the
American side within fifty miles in every direction had been sorted over
again and again, by those who had followed just such an impulse. In the
smaller city opposite, we learned that there were two suburban cars--one
that would take us to the Lake St. Claire shore, and another that
crossed the country to Lake Erie, travelling along her northern
indentations for nearly ten miles.

"We'll take the car that leaves here first," said I.

It was the Erie car. In the smoking compartment I fell into conversation
with a countryman who told me all that could possibly be synthesised by
one mind regarding the locality we were passing through. He suggested
that we try our fortune in the little town where the car first meets the
Lake. This we did and looked up and down that Main Street. It was quiet
and quaint, but something pressed home to us that was not all joy--the
tightness of old scar-tissue in the chest.... The countryman came
running to us from the still standing car, though this was not his
destination, and pointing to a little grey man in the street, said:

"He can tell you more than I can."

I regarded the new person with awe if he could do that.... In a way it
was true. He was a leisurely-minded man, who knew what he was going to
say before he spoke, had it correctly in mind. The product came forth
edited. He called men by 'phone--names strange to me then that have
become household names since--while we sat by smiling and silent in his
little newspaper shop.... And those who came wanted to know if we drank,
when they talked of renting their cottages; and if we were actors.

Not that we looked like actors, but it transpired that actor-folk had
rented one of the cottages another year, and had sat up late and had not
always clothed themselves continually full-length. Once, other actor
people had motored down, and it was said that those on the back seats of
the car had been rigid among beer-cases.

We were given the values and disadvantages of the East shore and also of
the West shore, the town between.... Som