s going to build
an estate up on the Hudson that will make the world gasp. I hadn't put
in a bid, but this idea of the judge's and Greg's, with the whole
village grouped about it, has given me the keynote to win the thing from
the whole bunch of American architects. He wants the village built as
well as the estate. That American garden idea will bowl him over. He's
progressively and rabidly American. The bids don't close until December,
so I'll have time to get real photographs and sketches. Me for the
reformed judge and the parson!"

"This is the most wonderful thing I ever heard and I want father pushed
to the limit with the planning. I don't care where the parson comes in,
just so I don't have to join the church to get the garden," I said, as I
tinkled the ice in Nickols' empty glass, while he consumed the last bit
of cream from the empty plate.

"Oh, I'll join the church if it is needed to push the garden," said
Nickols with a laugh, as he lit a cigarette and puffed a smoke ring out
toward the gray little chapel. "Most people who join churches do it for
some kind of pull, social or business, or a respectability stamp or to
be white-washed. I'll put on a frock coat and pass the plate if it will
help the parson evolve another phase of gardenism."

"Billy gets home from his poker game at the Last Chance, down in the
Settlement, on Sunday morning, just in time to bathe and get into his
frock coat to perform that office," I said with a laugh that had a hint
of recklessness tinged with contempt.

"I'll see Billy through both ceremonials," said Nickols. "Has Billy come
into the fold?"

"He has! So have all the rest," I answered. "I am the only black sheep
and they are all backsliding down on me. I am getting, and will get,
the blame of it all as a corrupter of public morals."

"Why don't you join and then do as you please with the official stamp of
Christianity upon you?" Nickols asked, as he puffed comfortably away in
the moonlight.

One of the things that cause me the deepest hurt is to try to get
Nickols to look down into my depths and read one, just any one, of the
hieroglyphics there. I know each time I open my nature to him he is
going to turn aside, and yet I will try. As his arm stole around me I
made another one of the attempts that I always know beforehand are
doomed to failure.

"There is something in me, a quality of mind that seems to be judicial,
which insists that as a cold scheme for existence in