e of what he knew about this Inspiration.

CHAPTER X. MISSY CANS THE COSMOS

As far back as Melissa Merriam could remember, she had lived with her
family in the roomy, rambling, white-painted house on Locust Avenue. She
knew intimately every detail of its being. She had, at various points in
her childhood, personally supervised the addition of the ell and of the
broad porch which ran round three sides of the house, the transformation
of an upstairs bedroom into a regular bathroom with all the pleasing
luxuries of modern plumbing, the installation of hardwood floors into
the "front" and "back" parlours. She knew every mousehole in the cellar,
every spider-web and cracked window-pane in the fascinating attic.
And the yard without she also knew well: the friendly big elm which,
whenever the wind blew, tapped soft leafy fingers against her own
window; the slick green curves of the lawn; the trees best loved by the
birds; the morning-glories on the porch which resembled fairy church
bells ready for ringing, the mignonette in the flower-beds like fragrant
fairy plumes, and the other flowers--all so clever at growing up into
different shapes and colours when you considered they all came from
little hard brown seeds. And she was familiar with the summerhouse back
in the corner of the yard, so ineffably delicious in rambler-time, but
so bleakly sad in winter; and the chicken-yard just beyond she knew,
too--Missy loved that peculiar air of placidity which pervades even the
most clucky and cackly of chicken-yards, and she loved the little downy
chicks which were so adept at picking out their own mothers amongst
those hens that looked all alike. When she was a little girl she used to
wonder whether the mothers grieved when their children grew up and
got killed and eaten and, for one whole summer, she wouldn't eat fried
chicken though it was her favourite delectable.

All of which means that Missy, during the seventeen years of her life,
had never found her homely environment dull or unpleasing. But, this
summer, she found herself longing, with a strange, secret but burning
desire, for something "different."

The feeling had started that preceding May, about the time she made such
an impression at Commencement with her Valedictory entitled "Ships
That Pass in the Night." The theme of this oration was the tremendous
influence that can trail after the chancest and briefest encounter of
two strangers. No one but herself (and