lignant even here, where cows had wandered in the meadows and
corn had been growing not ten years gone.

Altogether, the New House was a success. It was one of those architects'
successes which leave the owners veiled in privacy; it revealed nothing
of the people who lived in it save that they were rich. There are houses
that cannot be detached from their own people without protesting: every
inch of mortar seems to mourn the separation, and such a house--no
matter what be done to it--is ever murmurous with regret, whispering the
old name sadly to itself unceasingly. But the New House was of a kind
to change hands without emotion. In our swelling cities, great places
of its type are useful as financial gauges of the business tides;
rich families, one after another, take title and occupy such houses as
fortunes rise and fall--they mark the high tide. It was impossible to
imagine a child's toy wagon left upon a walk or driveway of the New
House, and yet it was--as Bibbs rightly called it--"beautiful."

What the architect thought of the "Golfo di Napoli," which hung in its
vast gold revel of rococo frame against the gray wood of the hall, is to
be conjectured--perhaps he had not seen it.

"Edith, did you say only eleven feet?" Bibbs panted, staring at it, as
the white-jacketed twin of a Pullman porter helped him to get out of his
overcoat.

"Eleven without the frame," she explained. "It's splendid, don't you
think? It lightens things up so. The hall was kind of gloomy before."

"No gloom now!" said Bibbs.

"This statue in the corner is pretty, too," she remarked. "Mamma and I
bought that." And Bibbs turned at her direction to behold, amid a
grove of tubbed palms, a "life-size," black-bearded Moor, of a plastic
composition painted with unappeasable gloss and brilliancy. Upon his
chocolate head he wore a gold turban; in his hand he held a gold-tipped
spear; and for the rest, he was red and yellow and black and silver.

"Hallelujah!" was the sole comment of the returned wanderer, and Edith,
saying she would "find mamma," left him blinking at the Moor. Presently,
after she had disappeared, he turned to the colored man who stood
waiting, Bibbs's traveling-bag in his hand. "What do YOU think of it?"
Bibbs asked, solemnly.

"Gran'!" replied the servitor. "She mighty hard to dus'. Dus' git in all
'em wrinkles. Yessuh, she mighty hard to dus'."

"I expect she must be," said Bibbs, his glance returning reflectively
to the b