ed of altering over the house in which they lived, but they had
never come to it; and they had often talked of building, but it had
always been a house in the country that they had thought of. "I wish
you had sold that lot."

"I hain't," said the colonel briefly.

"I don't know as I feel much like changing our way of living."

"Guess we could live there pretty much as we live here. There's all
kinds of people on Beacon Street; you mustn't think they're all
big-bugs. I know one party that lives in a house he built to sell, and
his wife don't keep any girl. You can have just as much style there as
you want, or just as little. I guess we live as well as most of 'em
now, and set as good a table. And if you come to style, I don't know
as anybody has got more of a right to put it on than what we have."

"Well, I don't want to build on Beacon Street, Si," said Mrs. Lapham
gently.

"Just as you please, Persis. I ain't in any hurry to leave."

Mrs. Lapham stood flapping the cheque which she held in her right hand
against the edge of her left.

The Colonel still sat looking up at her face, and watching the effect
of the poison of ambition which he had artfully instilled into her mind.

She sighed again--a yielding sigh. "What are you going to do this
afternoon?"

"I'm going to take a turn on the Brighton road," said the Colonel.

"I don't believe but what I should like to go along," said his wife.

"All right. You hain't ever rode behind that mare yet, Pert, and I
want you should see me let her out once. They say the snow's all
packed down already, and the going is A 1."

At four o'clock in the afternoon, with a cold, red winter sunset before
them, the Colonel and his wife were driving slowly down Beacon Street
in the light, high-seated cutter, where, as he said, they were a pretty
tight fit. He was holding the mare in till the time came to speed her,
and the mare was springily jolting over the snow, looking intelligently
from side to side, and cocking this ear and that, while from her
nostrils, her head tossing easily, she blew quick, irregular whiffs of
steam.

"Gay, ain't she?" proudly suggested the Colonel.

"She IS gay," assented his wife.

They met swiftly dashing sleighs, and let them pass on either hand,
down the beautiful avenue narrowing with an admirably even sky-line in
the perspective. They were not in a hurry. The mare jounced easily
along, and they talked of the different houses on eit