direction, and yet in a way the Terrace held its own. It could boast
of some wealth, and more distinguished grandfathers were to be heard
of within its small area than in the length and breadth of Dean
Avenue.

Its residents felt for each other that friendliness born of long
association. Some of the best people of the town had built their homes
here between thirty and forty years ago, and a comparison of
directories would have shown a surprising proportion of the old names
still represented.

Perhaps no one thing contributes more to a sense of dignity than long
residence in one house, and it was natural enough that the Terrace
should shrug its shoulders at the row of toy dwellings that sprang up
almost magically on Pleasant Street. That this thoroughfare, so long
given over to side yards and vacant lots, was showing a disposition to
improve, was a matter of no concern to the Terrace until unexpectedly
its own territory was invaded.

On the northeast corner of the Terrace and Pleasant Street there had
long stood a cottage. In the midst of a large lot, with fine
shade-trees around it and a beautifully kept lawn, it had never seemed
out of place among its more pretentious neighbors; but now upon the
death of its owner the property was divided into three lots and
offered for sale. What this might mean was at first hardly realized,
until one day men were discovered to be at work on the corner, digging
a foundation.

Upon inquiry it developed that a drug store was to be built. The
neighborhood did not like this, but felt on the whole it might have
been worse,--this conclusion, as Wayland Leigh pointed out later on,
being founded on the mistaken hypothesis that all drug stores are
pretty much alike.

It happened that the druggist had for a brother a young and aspiring
architect, who conceived the idea of putting up a building in keeping
with a residence district. The result was a sloping-roofed structure
whose shingled second story projected over the first, which was of
concrete. It might have been a rural station, or post-office, or a
seaside cottage, but a drug store it did not remotely suggest.

The store opened on Pleasant Street; to reach the private entrance you
must go in from the Terrace, where there was a square of lawn and a
maple tree, relic of better days.

The worst of it was its utter incongruousness, the best--so Alexina
Russell said--that it invariably made you smile, and anything in this
weary world