or despite her years she had by no means turned
traitor to Society. Nor had Society so much as thought of leaving her
out. In her, indeed, the fine flower of aristocracy was still in
bloom, and delicately fragrant.

The party, suiting their pace to hers, went more slowly after passing
Plymptons', whereupon Grandma, finding herself thus accommodated, gave
over what efforts she had been making and went more slowly still; and
so, when they came to the Brown place, which faced the middle of the
common, they were moving at a most deliberate rate. As they arrived
opposite the small gate, they all, as if by simultaneous thought,
stopped at once.

The object of their sudden interest was a rockery in the front yard.
This work, a pile of smooth boulders about three feet in height, and as
yet only partially covered with young vines, was the only scenic rival
to the artificial pond in the Harmons' front yard. Steve Brown built
it to please his mother, picking up a boulder here and there in the
course of his travels and getting it home by balancing it on the horn
of his saddle. During the last weeks of her illness, when her
wandering mind went back to the hills of her girlhood, her imagination
played continually around this mimic mountain of Steve's, and as it
seemed to be the one joy of her prairie-spent life, he would carry her
out on the porch in good weather and prop her up so that she could sit
and look at it. Jonas Hicks, becoming interested, took a hand in the
work; he kept on making contributions as long as the resources of the
country held out. Here was one reason that there was not a sole stone
remaining to be discovered.

"If we only had a few of them!" suggested Mrs. Norton.

"Yes--but he might not like it," said the younger Mrs. Plympton.

"But we would just borrow them, you know," explained Mrs. Norton. "And
anyway, how are we going to get along without them? Here we have
arranged for the Professor to come and tell us about them; and we all
promised to bring a specimen. It will seem strange for not one of us
to have a rock."

"Oh, I don't think it would do any harm for us to borrow a few stones,"
said Kitty Wright. "I don't see anything so awful about it."

There came a pause of indecision. Mrs. Harmon--she was the dignified
Daniel Webster of the circle, and just the opposite of the small and
sprightly Mrs. Wright--was yet to be heard from.

"Really," she said, "we ought not to agree to do things a