a look?" said Merle.

"But we were going out to look at your father's place."

"Well, that is father's place."

Peer stared at her face and let go the reins. "What? What? You don't
mean to say your father owns that place there?"

A few minutes later they were strolling through the great, low-ceiled
rooms. The whole house was empty now, the farm-bailiff living in the
servants' quarters. Peer grew more and more enthusiastic. Here, in these
great rooms, there had been festive gatherings enough in the days of the
old Governors, where cavaliers in uniform or with elegant shirt-frills
and golden spurs had kissed the hands of ladies in sweeping silk robes.
Old mahogany, pot-pourri, convivial song, wit, grace--Peer saw it all in
his mind's eye, and again and again he had to give vent to his feelings
by seizing Merle and embracing her.

"Oh, but look here, Merle--you know, this is a fairy-tale."

They passed out into the old neglected garden with its grass-grown paths
and well-filled carp-ponds and tumble-down pavilions. Peer rushed about
it in all directions. Here, too, there had been fetes, with coloured
lamps festooned around, and couples whispering in the shade of every
bush. "Merle, did you say your father was going to sell all this to the
State?"

"Yes, that's what it will come to, I expect," she answered. "The place
doesn't pay, he says, when he can't live here himself to look after it."

"But what use can the State make of it?"

"Oh, a Home for Imbeciles, I believe."

"Good Lord! I might have guessed it! An idiot asylum--to be sure." He
tramped about, fairly jumping with excitement. "Merle, look here--will
you come and live here?"

She threw back her head and looked at him. "I ask you, Merle. Will you
come and live here?"

"Do you want me to answer this moment, on the spot?"

"Yes. For I want to buy it this moment, on the spot."

"Well, aren't you--"

"Look, Merle, just look at it all. That long balcony there, with the
doric columns--nothing shoddy about that--it's the real thing. Empire. I
know something about it."

"But it'll cost a great deal, Peer." There was some reluctance in her
voice. Was she thinking of her violin? Was she loth to take root too
firmly?

"A great deal?" he said. "What did your father give for it?"

"The place was sold by auction, and he got it cheap. Fifty thousand
crowns, I think it was."

Peer strode off towards the house again. "We'll buy it. It's the
very place to mak