married woman who was evidently rich enough to
spend her summers at any of the most fashionable watering-places, but
who chose to go with her young family to that old barracks of a house,
and who had a husband who never came near her or his children, and who,
so far as the Glenford people knew, she never mentioned.

Mrs. Margaret Easterfield was a very fine woman, both to look at and to
talk to, but she did not believe that her duty to her fellow-beings
demanded that she should devote her first summer months at her new place
to the gratification of the eyes and ears of her friends and
acquaintances, so she had gone to Broadstone with her family--all
females--with servants enough, and for the whole of the summer they had
all been very happy.

But this summer things were going to be a little different at
Broadstone, for Mrs. Easterfield had arranged for some house parties.
Her husband was very kind and considerate about her plans, and promised
her that he would make one of the good company at Broadstone whenever it
was possible for him to do so.

So now it happened that he had come to see his wife and children and the
house in which they lived; and, having had some business at a railroad
center in the South, he had come through Glenford, which was unusual, as
the intercourse between Broadstone and the great world was generally
maintained through the gap in the mountains.

With his wife by his side and a little girl on each shoulder, Mr. Tom
Easterfield walked through the grounds and the gardens and out on the
lawn, and looked down over the tops of the trees upon the river which
sparkled far below, and he said to his wife that if she would let him do
it he would send a landscape-gardener, with a great company of Italians,
and they would make the place a perfect paradise in about five days.

"It could be ruined a great deal quicker by an army of locusts," she
said, "and so, if you do not mind, I think I will wait for the locusts."

It was not time yet for any of the members of the house parties to make
their appearance, and it was the general desire of his family that Mr.
Easterfield should remain until some of the visitors arrived, but he
could not gratify them. Three days after his arrival he was obliged to
be in Atlanta; and so, soon after breakfast one fine morning, the
Easterfield carriage drove over the turnpike to the Glenford station,
Mr. and Mrs. Easterfield on the back seat, and the two little girls
sitting