, called
waiting-rooms, spring up, haunted by flies, rotten bananas and village
muckers. They trail peanut shells, dust and vulgarity; and they make
all the country-side a back yard of the city. Let's take this one."

We passed once more the hole where the school had been, and drew near
a cross-road. I looked at Old Hundred, he at me. He nodded, and we
signalled the conductor. The car stopped. We alighted and turned
silently west, pursued by peering eyes. After a few hundred feet the
cross-road went up a rise and round a bend, and the new frame houses
along the Turnpike were shut from view. Over the brambled wall we saw
cows lying down in a pasture.

"It's going to rain," said I.

"No," said Old Hundred, "that's only a sign when they lie down first
thing in the morning."

Then we were silent once more. Into the west the land, the rocky,
rolling, stubborn, beautiful New England country-side, lay
familiar--how familiar!--to our eyes. To the left, back among the oaks
and hickories, stood a solid, simple house, painted yellow with green
blinds. To the right almost opposite was a smaller house of white,
with an orchard straggling up to the back door. And in one of them I
was born, and in the other Old Hundred. Down the road was another
house, a deep red, half hidden in the trees. Smoke was rising from the
chimney now, and drifting rosily against the first flush of sunset.

"Betsy's getting Cap'n Charles's supper," said Old Hundred.

"Then Betsy's about one hundred and six," said I, "and the Cap'n one
hundred and ten. Oh, John, it was a long, long time ago!"

"It doesn't seem so," he answered. "It seems only yesterday that we
met up there in your grove on Hallow-e'en to light our jack-lanterns,
and crept down the road in the cold white moonlight to poke them up at
Betsy's window. Remember when she caught us with the pail of water?"

"I remember," said I, "the time you put a tack in the seat of Cap'n
Charles's stool, in his little shoemaker's shop out behind the house,
and he gave you five cents, to return good for evil; so the next day
you did it again, in the hope of a quarter, but he decided there were
times when the Golden Rule is best honored in the breach, and gave you
a walloping."

"It was some walloping, too," said Old Hundred, with a reminiscent
grin. "It would be a good time now," he added, "to swipe melons, if
Betsy's getting supper. Though I believe she had all those melon stems
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