to where the Rivington train
was standing beside a platform shed.

There was no parlour car. Men and women--mostly women--with bundles were
already appropriating the seats and racks, and Honora found herself
wondering how many of these individuals were her future neighbours. That
there might have been an hysterical element in the lively anticipation
she exhibited during the journey did not occur to Howard Spence.

After many stops,--in forty-two minutes, to be exact, the brakeman
shouted out the name of the place which was to be her home, and of which
she had been ignorant that morning. They alighted at an old red railroad
station, were seized upon by a hackman in a coonskin coat, and thrust
into a carriage that threatened to fall to pieces on the frozen macadam
road. They passed through a village in which Honora had a glimpse of the
drug store and grocery and the Grand Army Hall; then came detached houses
of all ages in one and two-acre plots some above the road, for the
country was rolling; a very attractive church of cream-coloured stone,
and finally the carriage turned sharply to the left under an archway on
which were the words "Stafford Park," and stopped at a very new curbstone
in a very new gutter on the right.

"Here we are!" cried Howard, as he fished in his trousers pockets for
money to pay the hackman.

Honora looked around her. Stafford Park consisted of a wide centre-way of
red gravel, not yet packed, with an island in its middle planted with
shrubbery and young trees, the bare branches of which formed a black
tracery against the orange-red of the western sky. On both sides of this
centre-way were concrete walks, with cross-walks from the curbs to the
houses. There were six of these--three on each side--standing on a raised
terrace and about two hundred feet apart. Beyond them, to the northward,
Stafford Park was still a wilderness of second-growth hardwood,
interspersed with a few cedars.

Honora's house, the first on the right, was exactly like the other five.
If we look at it through her eyes, we shall find this similarity its main
drawback. If we are a little older, however, and more sophisticated, we
shall suspect the owner of Stafford Park and his architect of a design to
make it appear imposing. It was (indefinite and much-abused term)
Colonial; painted white; and double, with dormer windows of diagonal
wood-surrounded panes in the roof. There was a large pillared porch on
its least private sid