Dream of John
Ball visualised.

"When Adam dolve and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?"

Toy houses picturesquely set under trees that fringed the Common ...
houses with different, quaint colours ... the "green" in the centre
carefully cropped as if nibbled by sheep ... well-kept paths of
parti-coloured stone, as if each pebble had been placed there by
hand....

Everything here was born obviously of the Arts and Crafts movement, a
movement which seeks to teach that each shall make and build for himself
... if clumsily, yet uniquely ... the product to be something at least
individual and warm from the maker's personality.

I thought of Jusserand's _English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages_. If
the Canterbury Pilgrims, led by jolly Harry Bailey, their host, had
burst out from the woods, on horseback, singing and jesting, I should
not have considered their appearance an anachronism....

A tousle-headed girl-child in rompers which she was too big for, pointed
me Baxter's house, the largest in the community.

There seemed to be no one home when I dropped my suitcase on the front
porch....

I knocked vigorously. No one came. I waited a long while.

"A hell of a way to welcome me!" I meditated, my egotism hurt.

Again I knocked.

"Come in! do come in!" a gentle voice bade--it was Mrs. Baxter's.

I pushed the door open and stepped in. I set down my heavy suitcase with
a thump, on the bare, hardwood floor of the large room in which I found
myself--a room sparsely furnished, its walls lined with books. It had
one large window, under and along which was built in, a long, wide shelf
made into a sort of divan, promiscuous with cushions.

Propped up with a disordered heap of these cushions sat Mrs. Hildreth
Baxter, in blouse and bloomers; she was reading.

"Why, Johnnie Gregory!" she cried, swinging her graceful, slim legs
down, and rising, coming toward me, extending her hand in greeting....

"Why, Johnnie Gregory--YOU here!"

"Yes, didn't you!--"

"I _knew_ I was right ... Penton maintained it was to-morrow you were
due--Darrie sided with him--Darrie is a friend of mine who is visiting
us, from Virginia--but Ruth, Mubby's secretary," she finished, relapsing
into her intimate petting name for her husband, (Mubby is short for "My
hubby")--"Ruth sided with me, though we had quite an argument about it."

"And you and Ruth were right!"

"Yes, I was right," she assented, leaving "Ruth" out, with naive egoi