We have had three houses since I can remember. The
one that we have now on Fifth Avenue is four times as large--yes, six
times as large--and a hundred times as fine as the one I can first
remember, and yet, somehow, I always think, when I am sad or lonely, of
the little white house with the tiny rooms in it, with their low
ceilings and small windows, where I used to go when I was a very little
girl to see my father's mother. Mamma does not care for it; she was
brought up in the city; but I think my father loves it just as I do. He
always says he is going to buy it back, and I am going to make him
do it."

"I am going to buy back mine some day," said Keith, very slowly.

She glanced at him. His eyes were fastened on the far-off horizon, and
there was that in his face which she had never seen there before, and
which made her admire him more than she had ever done.

"I hope you will," she said. She almost hated Ferdy Wickersham for
having spoken of the place as Keith told her he had spoken.

When Keith reached home that evening he had a wholly new feeling for the
girl with whom accident had so curiously thrown him. He was really in
love with her. Hitherto he had allowed himself merely to drift with the
pleasant tide that had been setting in throughout these last weeks. But
the phases that she had shown that afternoon, her spirit, her courage,
her capricious rebelliousness, and, above all, that glimpse into her
heart which he had obtained as she sat on the rock overlooking the wide
sweep where he had had his home, and where the civilization to which it
belonged had had its home, had shown him a new creature, and he plunged
into love. Life appeared suddenly to open wide her gates and flood him
with her rosy light.

CHAPTER IX

MR. KEITH IS UNPRACTICAL, AND MRS. YORKE GIVES HIM GOOD ADVICE

The strolls in the budding woods and the glimpses shown her of a spirit
somewhat different from any she had known were beginning to have their
influence on Alice. It flattered her and filled her with a certain
content that the young school-teacher should like her so much; yet,
knowing herself, it gave her a vague feeling that he was wanting in that
quality of sound judgment which she recognized in some of her other
admirers. It rather frightened her to feel that she was on a pedestal;
and often he soared away from her with his poetry and his fancies, and
she was afraid that he would discover it and think she was a hypocrite.
So