ee such a change in any one?"

Marian approached with her brightest smile. "I'm glad Edith is keeping
you from being bored," she said. "I'm afraid I've been very remiss."

"I don't see how you could divide yourself into much smaller bits, Mrs.
Thatcher," Cosden replied. "This is a big family you have at present."

"The bigger the better," she exclaimed brightly. "I hoped I should find
you out here, and as I see the tea is still hot perhaps Edith will let
us join you. Philip and I have been walking and talking until we are
really tired."

"I am entranced with all this," Hamlen said, turning to Edith. "I had no
idea, when I paraded my few acres at Bermuda, that I was competing with
an estate like Sagamore. I wonder some one didn't rebuke me for my
presumption!"

"Isn't that a pretty compliment!" Marian cried. "You have put yourself
into every inch of your beautiful place, Philip; Harry and I have only
done that to a very small extent. It is beautiful, I admit, and I love
it just as I love the beauties with which you have surrounded yourself
at home."

"It makes little difference, after all, where one finds it, so long as
it is beauty," Hamlen replied. "'The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and
moonrise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall
be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my
Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.' I used to think Emerson must
have written that in Bermuda, but it might have been written here."

Edith caught the expression on Cosden's face and almost laughed.

"What's the use?" he whispered to her without being detected. "This pace
is too swift for me! He reeled that off as easily as I could the latest
quotations on copper!"

"Oh, Philip!" Mrs. Thatcher exclaimed, "I can't tell you what it means
to me to see you yourself again after that awful shock you gave me at
Bermuda! Truly, when we left you behind us I gave up hope."

"What hope there was you took away with you, so I was forced to follow."

"Come, Cossie--Connie--," Edith stumbled,--"if I'm to call you by your
given name you'll have to change it to something reasonable,--this is no
place for us."

"Don't let us drive you away," Marian protested.

"That's all right; we want to be driven away. If we stay longer, and Mr.
Hamlen talks like that, Mr. Cosden will become sentimental.--Bye, bye."

Mrs. Thatcher and Hamlen watched them as they strolled leisurely up the
path, Edith swi