ou'll be a little
past sixty!" He laughed with a mellow, amused sound. "And all you young
people of to-day will be telling your grandchildren how New York looked
at the half-century mark. Well, it has made rapid strides since eighteen
hundred. I sometimes wonder what there is to happen next. We have steam
on land and water. We have discovered Eldorado, and invented the
telegraph; and there are people figuring on laying one across the ocean.
That may come in your day."

"And a sewing-machine," added the little girl, smilingly.

The sewing-machine was attracting a good deal of attention now, and
making itself a useful factor.

But to live to see nineteen hundred! That would be like discovering the
fountain of perpetual youth.

CHAPTER XII

UP-TOWN

There had been so many delightful things in First Street, the little
girl thought at first it would almost break her heart to go away. Her
father, with the inertia of coming years, hated to be disturbed.

"I hoped, when we did make any change, we would build on the old place,"
he said. "I'd like country life again. But I am getting too old to farm;
and none of the boys care about it. If George had stayed at home," and
Father Underhill sighed.

George had not yet found his bonanza. There was gold in plenty in that
wonderful country. There were hardships, too. He kept those to tell of
in after years. It was a wild, rough, marvellous life; and every man of
them was waiting for a run of luck, that he might go East with his pile.
Meanwhile cities were begun.

Mrs. Underhill sighed a little also, in an undecided fashion. All the
children were here, and surely they could not go away and leave them
behind. The attractive, rural aspect of Yonkers had changed, or was it
that she had changed? Some of her old friends had gone to new homes
some had died. Then she had grown so accustomed to the stirring life of
the city.

"No, we should not want to go alone," she said.

"Steve's a bright business-man. John's long-headed, if he isn't quite so
brilliant. Ben will be all for books and travel. And Jim--well, it's
odd, but there won't be a farmer among them."

"No," returned their mother, not knowing whether to be glad or sorry.

"Then farming is changing. And the near-by places are turning into
towns. What the next half of the century will bring--"

Since there was no prospect of the homestead, they allowed themselves to
be persuaded to join the migration. Foreigners we