age.

Dakie Thayne had asked Ruth the same question five minutes before,
and they two had gone on already. Are girls ever too tired to walk
home after a picnic, when the best of the picnic is going to walk
home with them? Of course Rosamond was not too tired; and Mrs.
Holabird had the carryall quite to herself and her baskets.

They took the River Road, that was shady all the way, and sweet now
with the dropping scents of evening; it was a little longer, too, I
think, though that is one of the local questions that have never yet
been fully decided.

"How far does Miss Waite's ground run along the river?" asked
Kenneth, taking Rosamond's shawl over his arm.

"Not far; it only just touches; it runs back and broadens toward the
Old Turnpike. The best of it is in those woods and pastures."

"So I thought. And the pastures are pretty much run out."

"I suppose so. They are full of that lovely gray crackling moss."

"Lovely for picnics. Don't you think Miss Waite would like to sell?"

"Yes, indeed, if she could. That is her dream; what she has been
laying up for her old age: to turn the acres into dollars, and build
or buy a little cottage, and settle down safe. It is all she has in
the world, except her dressmaking."

"Mr. Geoffrey and Mr. Marchbanks want to buy. They will offer her
sixteen thousand dollars. That is the secret,--part of it."

"O, Mr. Kincaid! How glad,--how _sorry_, I can't help being, too!
Miss Waite to be so comfortable! And never to have her dear old
woods to picnic in any more! I suppose they want to make streets
and build it all up."

"Not all. I'll tell you. It is a beautiful plan. Mr. Geoffrey wants
to build a street of twenty houses,--ten on a side,--with just a
little garden plot for each, and leave the woods behind for a piece
of nature for the general good,--a real Union Park; a place for
children to play in, and grown folks to rest and walk and take tea
in, if they choose; but for nobody to change or meddle with any
further. And these twenty houses to be let to respectable persons of
small means, at rents that will give him seven per cent, for his
whole outlay. Don't you see? Young people, and people like Miss
Waite herself, who don't want _much_ house-room, but who want it
nice and comfortable, and will keep it so, and who _do_ want a
little of God's world-room to grow in, that they can't get in the
crowded town streets, where the land is selling by the foot to be
all built over wi