annondale was reached.

There was a scrambling for bundles, and flowers, and wraps. Fred Raymond
gathering up Nina's, while Dick, and Tom, and Billy, almost fought over
Jerrie's, and poor little Ann Eliza would have carried hers alone if
Jerrie had not helped her.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

IN SHANNONDALE.

Nine years of change in Shannondale, and the green hill-side, which
stretched from the common down to the river where, when our story
opened, sheep and cows were feeding in the pasture land, is thickly
covered with houses of every kind of architecture, from the Mansard roof
to the Queen Anne style, just coming into fashion, while the meadow
lands are dotted over with the small houses of the men who work in the
large furnace, or manufactory, which Peterkin had bought and enlarged,
as a monument, he said, and where he sometimes employed as many as four
hundred men, and had set up a whistle which could be heard for miles and
miles, and nearly blew off the chimney-tops when it sounded in the
morning at six o'clock, it was so loud and shrill. A screecher, Peterkin
called it, and he always listened with a smile of pride and satisfaction
on his face when he heard the first indications of its blowing, and knew
that four hundred men were quickening their stops on account of it,
lest they should be a few minutes late and have their wages docked.

Peterkin counted two millions now, and boasted the finest, or at least,
the most expensive house in the county, not even excepting Tracy Park,
which still held its own for solidity and old-fashioned dignity, and was
the show place to the strangers visiting in Shannondale.

When Peterkin made $20,000 in one day from some speculation in stocks,
he said to Mr. St. Claire, who was now a judge, and with whom he
pretended to be on terms of great familiarity:

'I say, judge, I'm goin' to build a buster, and whip the crowd. I've
lived about long enough in that little nine-by-ten hole, and I'll be
dumbed if I don't show 'em what I can do. I'll have towers, and
bay-windows, and piazzers, with checkered work all 'round 'em, and a
preservatory, and all kinds of new fangled doin's. May Jane and Ann
'Liza want that Queen Anny style, but I tell 'em no such squatty things
for me. They can have all the little winder panes and stained glass,
cart loads on't, if they want; but I'll have the rooms big and high, so
a feller won't bump his head. Yes, _sir_! I'm in for a smasher!'

And he built 'a s