e. For the
moment it was theirs. Leaving the car, they sat on the grass and
surveyed their property.

"Of course it is ours," Jean said, "and when you are over there, you can
think of it with the moon shining on it."

"I like the sloping roof," her lover took up the refrain, "and the big
chimney and the wide windows."

"I can sit on the window seat and watch for you, Derry, and there will be
smoke coming out of the chimney on cold days, and a fire roaring on the
hearth when you open the door--"

They decided that there ought to be eight rooms--, and they named them.
The Log-Fire Room; The Room of Little Feasts; the Place of Pots and Pans--

"That's the first floor," said Jean.

"Yes."

The upper floor was harder--The Royal Suite; The Friendly Boom, for the
dream maid of all work; The Spare Chamber--

"My grandmother had a spare chamber," Jean explained, "and I always liked
the sound of it, as if she kept her hospitality pressed down and running
over--"

Derry, who had written it all by the light of the moon, held his pencil
poised. "There is one more," he said, "the little room towards the
West--"

Jean hesitated for the breadth of a second. "Well, we may need another,"
she said, and left it nameless.

The door opened and a man came out. If he saw them, they meant nothing
to him--a pair of lovers by the wayside; there were many such.

He paced back and forth on the gravel walk. They could hear the crunch
of it under his feet. They saw the shining tip of his cigar--smelt its
fragrance--.

Again the door opened, to frame a woman. She called and her voice was
young.

"Dearest, it is late. Are you coming in?"

His young voice answered. His far-flung cigar-end trailed across the
darkness, his eager steps gave quick response--the door was shut--.

"Oh, Derry, I'd call you like that---"

"And I should come."

The light went out on the lower floor, and presently in a room above a
window was illumined.

THE SIXTH DAY

A dream house must have dream furniture. There are old shops in
Alexandria, where, less often than in earlier years, one may find
treasures, bow-legged chairs and gate-legged tables, yellowed letters
written by famous pens, steel engravings which have hung in historic
halls, pewter and plate, Luster and Sevres, Wedgwood and Willow,
Chippendale and Hepplewhite, Adams and Empire, everything linked with
some distinguished name, everything with a story, real or invented. One
m