r Mrs. Chance."

Happily this wish was not impossible of fulfillment, so Steve at once
consulted his friends, and after much walking about (Nannie could
walk) and much discussion, the four agreed upon a small dovecote of a
place about a mile from Randolph's and Constance's home--a dear little
cottage with enough land about it to raise anything and everything.

Nannie was like a child with a new toy, and her delight lent her a
hundred little airs and graces that would only have provoked Mrs.
Lamont had she seen them. She always said that the child was rude and
stupid in society where she should have done her best, and only
fascinating with people who could be of no earthly use to her.

And now the little kitchen was set up, the fire was burning briskly,
the cook was at hand, and the delectable, indigestible material was
ready for the spit.

VI

Why people born and bred for city life _will_ take to the woods; why
people shapen, as it were, for the plow will fly to town, and men
built for a naval gait will attempt to sit in high places on shore, is
one of those elusive problems that are forever defying solution. We
only know that such things exist, and a few of us come up and have a
crack at them, as it were, and fail to make the slightest impression
on their thick skulls. And still the wonder grows. Now it is a naval
hero come ashore from seas where he was master of the situation, laden
with honors and refulgent with glory sufficient for the lifetime of
ten reasonable men, who straightway begins to covet a chair of whose
very shape and proportions he is ignorant, and in which he can only be
conspicuous as a melancholy misfit. O Heroism! why failest them to
reach the judgment? O Glory! why canst thou not touch up the common
sense? Anon we have a yeoman who has struck oil and has been thrown up
on high by its monetary power, forsaking the obscure nook for which
nature shaped him and attempting to sit in our drawing-room, eat at
our dinner-table, and obtrude his rich vulgarity upon gentler guests.

It was in accordance with this lamentable fashion of undertaking that
for which they have no gift; this rushing in of certain folk where
angels fear to tread, that Steve turned farmer. Not that he gave up
his situation on the paper. Ah, no! He tried to be that which no man
could be successfully without supernatural aid--journalist and farmer
both. His work in the city had for some ti