peaches and even nectarines grew.

The business of Breck and Company, wholesale grocers, descended to my
mother's first cousin, Robert Breck, who lived at Claremore. The very
sound of that word once sufficed to give me a shiver of delight; but the
Claremore I knew has disappeared as completely as Atlantis, and the place
is now a suburb (hateful word!) cut up into building lots and connected
with Boyne Street and the business section of the city by trolley lines.
Then it was "the country," and fairly saturated with romance. Cousin
Robert, when he came into town to spend his days at the store, brought
with him some of this romance, I had almost said of this aroma. He was no
suburbanite, but rural to the backbone, professing a most proper contempt
for dwellers in towns.

Every summer day that dawned held Claremore as a possibility. And such
was my capacity for joy that my appetite would depart completely when I
heard my mother say, questioningly and with proper wifely respect--

"If you're really going off on a business trip for a day or two, Mr.
Paret" (she generally addressed my father thus formally), "I think I'll
go to Robert's and take Hugh."

"Shall I tell Norah to pack, mother," I would exclaim, starting up.

"We'll see what your father thinks, my dear."

"Remain at the table until you are excused, Hugh," he would say.

Released at length, I would rush to Norah, who always rejoiced with me,
and then to the wire fence which marked the boundary of the Peters domain
next door, eager, with the refreshing lack of consideration
characteristic of youth, to announce to the Peterses--who were to remain
at home the news of my good fortune. There would be Tom and Alfred and
Russell and Julia and little Myra with her grass-stained knees, faring
forth to seek the adventures of a new day in the shady western yard. Myra
was too young not to look wistful at my news, but the others pretended
indifference, seeking to lessen my triumph. And it was Julia who
invariably retorted "We can go out to Uncle Jake's farm whenever we want
to. Can't we, Tom?"...

No journey ever taken since has equalled in ecstasy that leisurely trip
of thirteen miles in the narrow-gauge railroad that wound through hot
fields of nodding corn tassels and between delicious, acrid-smelling
woods to Claremore. No silent palace "sleeping in the sun," no edifice
decreed by Kubla Khan could have worn more glamour than the house of
Cousin Robert Breck.

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