out like smoke; the tradesmen set out
their new wares to public view, the bees make honey, the birds repeat
their world-old nesting songs, the cocks crow straight through the
day; nothing stops till the sun sets, and even then it is hard for
such an ardent clock of life to quite run down.

It was that spirit of unrest which had sent the two ladies out making
calls. There was not one where, if the womenkind were at home at all
and not afield, but they had been possessed of the spring activity,
until they reached the Ranger place, where the new-comers to
Banbridge lived. The Ranger place was, in some respects the most
imposing house in Banbridge. It stood well back from the road, in
grounds which deserved the name. They were extensive, dotted with
stately groups of spruces and pines, and there was in the rear of the
house a pond with a rustic bridge, fringed with willows, which gave
the place its name, "Willow Lake." The house had formerly been owned
by two maiden women with much sentiment, the sisters of the present
owner. The place was "Willow Lake." The pond was the "Willow Mere,"
in defiance of the name of the place. The little rustic bridge was
the "Bridge of Sighs," for some obscure reason, perhaps buried in the
sentimental past of the sisters. And the little hollow which was
profusely sprinkled with violets in the spring was "Idlewild." It was
in "Idlewild" that the new family, perverse to the spirit of the day,
idled when the callers drove up the road in the best coach.

There was in the little violet-sprinkled hollow a small building with
many peaks as to its roof, and diamond-paned windows which had been
fitted out with colored glass in a hideous checker-work of orange and
crimson and blue, which the departed sisters had called, none but
themselves knew why, "The Temple." On the south side grew a rose-bush
of the kind which flourished most easily in the village, taking most
kindly to the soil. It was an ordinary kind of rose. The sisters had
called it an eglantine, but it was not an eglantine. They had been
very fond, when the weather permitted, of sitting in this edifice
with their work. The place was fitted up with a rustic table and two
quite uncomfortable rustic chairs, particularly uncomfortable for the
sisters, who were of a thin habit of body.

When James Ranger, who was himself not a man of sentiment, showed the
new aspirant for the renting of the place this fantastic building, he
spoke of it with a