ould be acquired. But how silent and lonely the house
seemed when the Pride and the Hope were gone! How glad we were that
Christmas was only a month away!

III

_Under the spell of the white touch_

In an earlier chapter I have spoken of our attic as an almost unfailing
source of supply. Any sort of vessel or implement we might happen to
need was pretty certain to turn up there if we looked long enough. It
provided us with jugs and jars, and by and by, when the snow came, a
wooden shovel and a bootjack for our rubber boots. I said that probably
some day we should find a horse and buggy and harness up there, which
was about all that we needed, now. It was just one of those careless
remarks we all make on occasion. It never occurred to me that it was
tinged with prophecy.

We did not find the horse, harness, and buggy in the attic, but we found
them--heired them, to use a good New England word, just as we had heired
the other things. The automobile had not yet reached Brook Ridge, but
it was arriving in the centers and suburbs, upsetting old traditions,
severing old ties. Once we had been commuters on Long Island, and in our
happy suburb there still lived a friend to whom the years had brought
prosperity and motor-machines. In the earlier, more deliberate years he
had found comfort and sufficient speed in an enviable surrey, attached
to a faithful family horse which now, alas! was too slow, too deliberate
for the pace of wealth and the honk-honk of style. So the old horse
stood in the stable, for his owners did not wish to see him go to
strangers. But then one day they heard how we had turned ourselves into
farmers, and presently word came that if we needed Old Beek (shortened
from Lord Beaconsfield), surrey, and harness complete, they were ours to
command. They would be delivered to us in the city, the message said,
from which point we could drive, or ship, them to the farm. It was a
windfall from a clear sky--we said it must be our lucky year. We
accepted the quickest way, and were presently in the city to receive
Lord Beaconsfield.

Had it been earlier in the year, during those magic days of September,
or even in October, when the drifting leaves had turned the highways
into thoroughfares of gold, we should have driven by easy stages the
sixty miles, across the hills and far away, to Brook Ridge, resting
where the night found us. It was too late for that now. The roadsides
were no longer flower-decked or golden