an important public building," smiled Mother. "And I think
he will be able to plan a house to satisfy Mr. and Mrs. Haselford. It's
just the kind of work he likes."

"Mother, when they leave Rotherwood, shall we have to let it to any one
else, or would it be possible----" Ingred hesitated, with the wish that
for nearly a year she had put resolutely away from her trembling on her
lips.

"To go back there ourselves?" finished Mother. "If Father's affairs
prosper, as they seem likely to do at present, I think we may safely say
'yes.' It never rains but it pours, and just as his profession has
suddenly taken a leap forward, his private investments have picked up.
Colonial mines, that he thought utterly done for, have begun to work
again, and pay dividends. Our prospects now are very different indeed
from what they were a few months ago. Don't look too excited, Ingred!
Houses take a long time to build, nowadays, and it may be years before
Mr. Haselford's new place is finished, and we can get re-possession of
Rotherwood."

"I don't care, so long as there's hope of ever having it again!"

"It's our own home, and naturally we love it, but we must not forget
what a debt of gratitude we owe to the Bungalow. We have been very happy
here, and I think we have been thrown together, and have learnt to know
one another in a way we should never have done at Rotherwood. All the
sacrifices we have made for each other have drawn us far closer as a
family, and linked us up so that we ought never to be able to drift
apart now, which might have happened if we had all been able just to
pursue our own line. We have learnt the value here of simple pleasures,
we've enjoyed the moors and the flowers and the birds and the stars and
all the beautiful things that Nature can give us. The realization of
them is worth far more than anything that money can buy, for it's the
'joy that no man taketh from you.' I have grown to love
Wynch-on-the-Wold so dearly that I shall beg Father to keep on the
Bungalow as a country cottage, and I shall run out here for holidays
when I feel Rotherwood is too much for me, and I want to be alone for a
while with Nature."

"I expect we'll all want to do just the same!" said Quenrede, looking
from the gay flower-beds, which her own hands had planted, over the
hedge to where the brown moors stretched away into the dim gray of the
distance. "I thought it was going to be hateful when I came here, but,
Muvvie, I think it's