ith
any old-fashioned, smooth-running course for true love. "It must shoot
the chutes, or nothing," she was accustomed to say, in her cheerful,
high-spirited manner.

Paul thought, with self-approval, that, for orphans of the poorer branch
of the Hollister family, he and Madeleine had not done badly with their
lives thus far.

He looked again impatiently toward the entrance to the grounds. A
trolley-car had just rattled by on the main road. If Lydia was on it,
she would appear at that turning under the trees. No; evidently she had
not been on that one. The harsh jar of the trolley's progress died away
in the distance and no Lydia appeared. He had fifteen minutes to wait
for the next one.

He drew out a note-book and began jotting down some ideas about the
disposition of the five acres surrounding the house. He was ambitious to
have the appearance of a country estate and avoid the "surburban" look
which would be so fatally easy to acquire in the suburban place. He
decided that he would not as yet fence in his land. The house was the
last one of a group of handsome residences that had lately sprung up in
the vicinity of the new Country Club, and to the south was still open
country, so that without a fence, he reflected, he could have himself,
and convey tacitly to others, the illusion of owning the wide sweep of
meadow and field which stretched away a mile or more to a group of beech
trees.

He jumped down lightly from the porch, as yet but sketchily outlined in
joists and rafters, and stood in a litter of shavings, bits of board and
piles of yellow earth, with a kindling eye. He had that happy prophetic
vision of the home-builder which overlooks all present deficiencies and
in an instant, with a confident magic, erects all that the slow years
are to build. He saw a handsome, well-kept house, correctly colonial in
style, grounds artfully laid out to increase the impression of space, a
hospitable, smoothly run interior, artistic, homelike, admired.

A meadow-lark near him began to tinkle out its pretty silver notes. The
sun set slowly below the smoky horizon; a dewy peace fell about the
deserted place. Paul had his visions of other than material elements in
his future and Lydia's. Such a dream came to him there, standing in the
dusk before the germ of his home to be. He saw himself an alert man of
forty-five, a good citizen, always on the side of civic honor; a good
captain of industry, quick to see and reward merit;