est of the unspoiled, irregular, open slope and
swell and dingle of the hill-foot tract that dipped down at one
reach, we know, to the river.

The trees, and shrubs, and vines, and ferns, and stones, were left
in their wild prettiness; only some roughness of nature's wear and
tear of dead branches and broken brushwood, and the like, were taken
away, and the little footpaths cleared for pleasant walking.

There were all the little shady, sweet-smelling nooks, just as they
had been; all the little field-parlors, opening with their winding
turns between bush and rock, one into another. The twenty households
might find twenty separate places, if they all wanted to take a
private out-door tea at once.

The cellars were dug; the frames were up; workmen were busy with
brick and mortar, hammer and plane; two or three buildings were
nearly finished, and two--the two standing at the head of the
Horseshoe, looking out at the back into the deepest and pleasantest
wood-aisle, where the leaves were reddening and mellowing in the
early October frost, and the ferns were turning into tender
transparent shades of palest straw-color--were completed, and had
dwellers in them; the cheeriest, and happiest, and coziest of
neighbors; and who do you think these were?

Miss Waite and Delia, of course, in one house; and with them,
dividing the easy rent and the space that was ample for four women,
were Lucilla Waters and her mother. In the other, were Kenneth and
Rosamond Kincaid and Dorris.

Kenneth and Rosamond had been married just three weeks. Rosamond had
told him she would begin the world with him, and they had begun.
Begun in the simple, true old-fashioned way, in which, if people
only would believe it, it is even yet not impossible for young men
and women to inaugurate their homes.

They could not have had a place at Westover, and a horse and buggy
for Kenneth to go back and forth with; nor even a house in one of
the best streets of Z----; and down at East Square everything was
very modern and pretentious, based upon the calculation of rising
values and a rush of population.

But here was this new neighborhood of--well, yes,--"model houses;" a
blessed Christian speculation for a class not easily or often
reached by any speculations save those that grind and consume their
little regular means, by forcing upon them the lawless and arbitrary
prices of the day, touching them at every point in their _living_,
but not governing corres