leaded glass doors and secret drawers.
There were hooked rugs and patchwork quilts of intricate and wonderful
design, hand woven bedspreads of a blue seldom seen and Chinese
cabinets and strange grotesque brasses, no doubt brought to New
England by the Norse sailor man who had left his mark on the family
according to Mrs. Buck.

Miss Ann Peyton felt singularly at home from the moment she entered
the front door. The guest chamber, where old Dick Buck had made it
convenient to spend the last years of his life, was so pleasant one
hardly blamed the old man for establishing himself there. A
low-pitched room it was, with windows looking out over the meadow and
furnished with mahogany so rare and beautiful it might have graced a
museum.

"Now, Cousin Ann, please make yourself absolutely at home. If you want
to unpack immediately there is a dandy closet here, and here is a
wardrobe and here is a highboy and here a bureau. Uncle Billy can
take your trunks to the attic when you empty them. I wish I could help
you, but Mumsy and I are up to our necks canning peaches and we can't
stop a minute. If you want to come help peel we'd be delighted. We are
on the side porch and it is lovely and cool out there," and Judith was
gone.

Help peel peaches! Why not? Miss Ann smiled. Nobody ever asked her to
help. It was a new experience for her. She decided not to unpack
immediately, but donned an apron and hastened to the side porch.

It was pleasant there. Mrs. Buck was peeling laboriously, anxious not
to waste a particle of fruit. She stopped long enough to get a paring
knife and bowl for the visitor.

"Judith has gone to show your servant where to put the carriage and
horses and then to open up the house in the back for him. It was the
old house the Bucks had before my father bought this place--a good
enough house with furniture in it. Judith gives it a big cleaning now
and then and I reckon the old man can move right in."

Old Billy was in the seventh heaven of delight. A stable for Cupid and
Puck, with plenty of good pasture land, a carriage house for the
coach, shared with Judith's little blue car, but best of all, a house
for himself!

"A house with winders an' a chimbly an' a po'ch wha' I kin sot cans er
jewraniums an' a box er portulac! I been a dreamin' 'bout sech a house
all my life, Miss Judy. Sometimes when I is fo'ced ter sleep in the
ca'ige, when Miss Ann an' me air a visitin' wha' things air kinder
crowded like, I d