ition,
of a tradition inherently if unconsciously the innermost reality of her
being a tradition that miraculously was not dead, since after all the
years it had begun to put forth these vigorous shoots....

What Janet chiefly realized was the delicious, contented sense of having
come, visually at least, to the home for which she had longed. But her
humour was that of a child who has strayed, to find its true dwelling
place in a region of beauty hitherto unexplored and unexperienced,
tinged, therefore, with unreality, with mystery,--an effect enhanced
by the chance stillness and emptiness of the place. She wandered up and
down the Common, whose vivid green was starred with golden dandelions;
and then, spying the arched and shady vista of a lane, entered it,
bent on new discoveries. It led past one of the newer buildings, the
library--as she read in a carved inscription over the door--plunged
into shade again presently to emerge at a square farmhouse, ancient and
weathered, with a great square chimney thrust out of the very middle of
the ridge-pole,--a landmark left by one of the earliest of Silliston's
settlers. Presiding over it, embracing and protecting it, was a splendid
tree. The place was evidently in process of reconstruction and repair,
the roof had been newly shingled, new frames, with old-fashioned, tiny
panes had been put in the windows; a little garden was being laid out
under the sheltering branches of the tree, and between the lane and the
garden, half finished, was a fence of an original and pleasing design,
consisting of pillars placed at intervals with upright pickets between,
the pickets sawed in curves, making a line that drooped in the middle.
Janet did not perceive the workman engaged in building this fence until
the sound of his hammer attracted her attention. His back was bent, he
was absorbed in his task.

"Are there any stores near here?" she inquired.

He straightened up. "Why yes," he replied, "come to think of it, I have
seen stores, I'm sure I have."

Janet laughed; his expression, his manner of speech were so delightfully
whimsical, so in keeping with the spirit of her day, and he seemed to
accept her sudden appearance in the precise make-believe humour she
could have wished. And yet she stood a little struck with timidity,
puzzled by the contradictions he presented of youth and age, of
shrewdness, experience and candour, of gentility and manual toil. He
must have been about thirty-five;