much so that when John put his name down for Masterpieces
of the World's Art, which was to cost twenty dollars by the time it was
complete, he thought it advisable to let the numbers accumulate at the
store.

Whatever the place represented to their parents, it was pure joy to the
young Murchisons. It offered a margin and a mystery to life. They saw
it far larger than it was; they invested it, arguing purely by its
difference from other habitations, with a romantic past. "I guess
when the Prince of Wales came to Elgin, Mother, he stayed here," Lorne
remarked, as a little boy. Secretly he and Advena took up boards in more
than one unused room, and rapped on more than one thick wall to find a
hollow chamber; the house revealed so much that was interesting, it was
apparent to the meanest understanding that it must hide even more.
It was never half lighted, and there was a passage in which fear
dwelt--wild were the gallopades from attic to cellar in the early
nightfall, when every young Murchison tore after every other, possessed,
like cats, by a demoniac ecstasy of the gloaming. And the garden, with
the autumn moon coming over the apple trees and the neglected asparagus
thick for ambush, and a casual untrimmed boy or two with the delicious
recommendation of being utterly without credentials, to join in the rout
and be trusted to make for the back fence without further hint at the
voice of Mrs Murchison--these were joys of the very fibre, things to
push ideas and envisage life with an attraction that made it worth while
to grow up.

And they had all achieved it--all six. They had grown up sturdily,
emerging into sobriety and decorum by much the same degrees as the old
house, under John Murchison's improving fortunes, grew cared for and
presentable. The new roof went on, slate replacing shingles, the year
Abby put her hair up; the bathroom was contemporary with Oliver's
leaving school; the electric light was actually turned on for the
first time in honour of Lorne's return from Toronto, a barrister and
solicitor; several rooms had been done up for Abby's wedding. Abby had
married, early and satisfactorily, Dr Harry Johnson, who had placidly
settled down to await the gradual succession of his father's practice;
"Dr Harry and Dr Henry" they were called. Dr Harry lived next door to
Dr Henry, and had a good deal of the old man's popular manner. It was
an unacknowledged partnership, which often provided two opinions for the
sam