Guernseys, or Jerseys, or whatever they may have been; she evinced a
sudden passion for simplicity,--occasional simplicity, at least,--for a
contrast to and escape from a complicated life of luxury. She built
another house for the superintendent banished him from the little
farmhouse (where Ham had kept two rooms); banished along with the
superintendent the stiff plush furniture, the yellow-red carpets, the
easels and the melodeon, and decked it out in bright chintzes, with
wall-papers to match, dainty muslin curtains, and rag-carpet rugs on the
hardwood floors. The pseudo-classic porch over the doorway, which had
suggested a cemetery, was removed, and a wide piazza added, furnished
with wicker lounging chairs and tables, and shaded with gay awnings.

Here, to the farm, accompanied by a maid, she had been in the habit of
retiring from time to time, and here she came in early July. Here,
dressed in the simplest linen gowns of pink or blue or white, I found a
Nancy magically restored to girlhood,--anew Nancy, betraying only traces
of the old, a new Nancy in a new Eden. We had all the setting, all the
illusion of that perfect ideal of domesticity, love in a cottage. Nancy
and I, who all our lives had spurned simplicity, laughed over the joy we
found in it: she made a high art of it, of course; we had our simple
dinners, which Mrs. Olsen cooked and served in the open air; sometimes on
the porch, sometimes under the great butternut tree spreading its shade
over what in a more elaborate country-place, would have been called a
lawn,--an uneven plot of grass of ridges and hollows that ran down to the
orchard. Nancy's eyes would meet mine across the little table, and often
our gaze would wander over the pastures below, lucent green in the level
evening light, to the darkening woods beyond, gilt-tipped in the setting
sun. There were fields of ripening yellow grain, of lusty young corn that
grew almost as we watched it: the warm winds of evening were heavy with
the acrid odours of fecundity. Fecundity! In that lay the elusive yet
insistent charm of that country; and Nancy's, of course, was the
transforming touch that made it paradise. It was thus, in the country, I
suggested that we should spend the rest of our existence. What was the
use of amassing money, when happiness was to be had so simply?

"How long do you think you could stand it?" she asked, as she handed me a
plate of blackberries.

"Forever, with the right woman," I