at indicated the
colossal architecture of New York seemed to float like bubbles in an
azure bowl. Across the street, a vacant plot of land, neglected because
of imperfect title, was cut diagonally by a footpath leading down to
Broad Street, where, out of sight but not of hearing, trolley-cars
between Newark and Paterson thundered at uncertain intervals.

It was our custom, as we sat on our verandah during these afternoons, to
watch the gradual appearance of familiar figures upon this path. We knew
that a few moments after the whistle of the five-twenty had sounded at
the grade-crossing down in the valley, certain neighbours who commuted
to New York would infallibly rise into view on this path. There was
Eckhardt, who lived at five hundred and nine, and spent the day on the
fourteenth floor of the Flatiron Building. There was Williams,
immaculate of costume, who designed automobile bodies and had an office
on Broadway. There was Wederslen, the art-critic of the _New York Daily
News_, a man whom all three of us held in peculiar abhorrence because he
persisted in ignoring Mac's etchings. There was Arber, rather short of
stature and rather long of lip, an Irishman who, miraculous to state,
admired Burns. There was Confield, an Indianian from Logansport, who had
been to Europe on a vacation tour (_No. 67 Series C., Inclusive Fare
$450_) and invariably carried a grip plastered with hotel labels to
prove it. We had met these men at tennis and at the Field Club, and in
our English way esteemed them. They would come up, head-first, so to
speak, out of the valley, revealing themselves step by step until they
reached the street, when they would acknowledge our salutations by a
lift of the hat and a wave of the evening paper, and pass on to their
homes. They generally came, too, in the order in which I have given
them. Eckhardt was always first, for he did not smoke, and the
smoking-cars on the Erie Road were generally behind. And Confield, of
course, was likely to be last, for he had his bag.

It was so on the day of which I speak. The deep bay of the locomotive
came up on the still autumn air, and a cloud of dazzling white vapour
rose like a balloon above the trees and drifted slowly into thin curls
and feathers against the blue sky. It was, even in this trifling detail,
a homelike landscape, for Bill had told us how, from the square hall
window of High Wigborough, you could see the white puffs of invisible
trains on the lonely