day holds fair; so I
might as well keep myself in practice." Then he jocularly let himself
loose on transportation, and part payments down, and street
improvements "in," and healthful country air for young children. He was
very fluent and somewhat cynical, and turned the seamy side of his trade
a little too clearly to view.

He explained how the spring had been exceptionally wet in that
region,--"which, after all, _is_ low," he acknowledged,--and how his
firm, by digging a few trenches in well-considered directions, had
drained all its standing water to adjoining acres still lower, the
property of a prospective rival. Recalling this smart trick made Johnny
think better of the people who would maroon him for a succession of
Sundays, and he became more genially communicative still.

"That gray streak off to the west--if you can see it--is our water
drying up. Better be drying there than here. You can put a solid foot on
every yard of our ground to-day. Come along with me and I'll show you
your cottage--_domus, a, um_. Not quite right? Well, no great matter."

He pointed toward a yellow pile of two-by-fours, siding, and shingles.
"Be sure you make your last payment before you find yourselves warped
out of shape."

We followed. Johnny seemed much more expert and worldly-wise than either
of us. We held our innocent excursion in abeyance and bowed with a
certain embarrassed awe to Johnny's demonstration of his aptitude for
taking the world as it was and to his light-handed, care-free way of
handling so serious a matter, to most men, as the founding of a home. As
we continued our jaunt, I began to feel that I now liked Johnny a little
less than I could have wished.

III

At about this time Raymond and I found ourselves members of a little
circle that expressed itself chiefly through choral music. It was almost
a neighborhood circle, and almost a self-made circle--it gradually
evolved itself, with no special guidance or intention, until, finally,
there it was. I, at that period, may have felt that it would verge on
the presumptuous to pick and choose--to attempt consciously the
fabrication of a social environment--and so I adopted with docility the
one which presented itself. Raymond, on the other hand, may have felt
that even the best which was available was unlikely to be good enough
and have accepted fatalistically anything which could possibly be made
to do.

Just why our little group of a dozen or so should have