"It is pleasure enough to think of the children's having it," he said
to a plain-spoken neighbor who remonstrated with him on the ground
that he could never live there. "The boys will be old enough to care
for their sister, and the house on the hill will be just the place for
a little maid to grow up."

His children were of widely separated ages, for Ralph, the eldest, was
twenty-one, Felix seventeen, and Barbara, as has been said, only
twelve. It happened also that they had not all of them the same
tastes, for while the two younger ones loved the country and looked
forward to living on the Windy Hill, Ralph's desire was to go on
working in the dusty office where he had already begun to prosper.

"He is a good getter, but a poor spender," the neighbors said, and in
this were right. Ralph, with his first success, had begun to think
too much of money and too little of other things.

In the end the cottage was never finished, only the main portion, a
tiny dwelling, was completed without the two broad wings with which
Howard Brighton had meant to enlarge it and which he did not live to
build. When their father had gone from them his children found that he
had left everything he had to Ralph, since the laws of seventy-five
years ago made some difficulty over property being held by those who
were not of age.

"Ralph has a wise head on his young shoulders and will know how to
take good care of the younger ones," was the comment of busy tongues.

Perhaps Ralph heard them, with the result that he felt older and wiser
than he really was, but of that no one can be sure.

It was on a clear, warm day of mid-July when they moved from the
airless street of the town to their new, wind-swept dwelling on the
hill.

"It looks like home already," Barbara said as they came up to the
door, for, with its wide, low roof, its broad windows, and its
swinging half doors that let in the sunshine and the fresh breezes, it
seemed indeed a place in which to forget their sadness and to find a
new, happy life. The rustling voice of the oak tree above seemed to be
bidding them welcome, and a tall clump of hollyhocks by the
door-stone, shell pink and white, seemed to have come into bloom that
very day just for their home-coming.

Barbara ran from room to room, exclaiming in delight over the new
freedom, while the two brothers sat on the doorstep to look down over
their new domain and to talk of the future. Their father had planned
to turn the m