r less
important things, in his college bedroom at New Haven. Honora wore it
for a whole week; a triumph indeed for Mr. Rossiter; when it was placed
in a box in Honora's bedroom, which contained other gifts--not all from
him--and many letters, in the writing of which learning had likewise
suffered. The immediate cause of the putting away of this ring was said
to be the renowned Clinton Howe, who was on the Harvard football eleven,
and who visited Mr. George Hanbury that Easter. Fortunate indeed the
tailor who was called upon to practise his art on an Adonis like Mr.
Howe, and it was remarked that he scarcely left Honora's side at the
garden party and dance which Mrs. Dwyer gave in honour of the returning
heroes, on the Monday of Easter week.

This festival, on which we should like to linger, but cannot, took
place at the new Dwyer residence. For six months the Victorian mansion
opposite Uncle Tom's house had been sightless, with blue blinds drawn
down inside the plate glass windows. And the yellow stone itself was
not so yellow as it once had been, but had now the appearance of soiled
manilla wrapping paper, with black streaks here and there where the soot
had run. The new Dwyer house was of grey stone, Georgian and palatial,
with a picture-gallery twice the size of the old one; a magnificent and
fitting pioneer in a new city of palaces.

Westward the star of Empire--away from the smoke. The Dwyer mansion,
with its lawns and gardens and heavily balustraded terrace, faced the
park that stretched away like a private estate to the south and west.
That same park with its huge trees and black forests that was Ultima
Thule in Honora's childhood; in the open places there had been real
farms and hayricks which she used to slide down with Peter while Uncle
Tom looked for wild flowers in the fields. It had been separated from
the city in those days by an endless country road, like a Via Claudia
stretching towards mysterious Germanian forests, and it was deemed a
feat for Peter to ride thither on his big-wheeled bicycle. Forest
Park was the country, and all that the country represented in Honora's
childhood. For Uncle Tom on a summer's day to hire a surrey at
Braintree's Livery Stable and drive thither was like--to what shall that
bliss be compared in these days when we go to Europe with indifference?

And now Lindell Road--the Via Claudia of long, ago--had become Lindell
Boulevard, with granitoid sidewalks. And the dreary field