the water was running. When I heard
this I threw down my fishing-rod and would have nothing to do with an
artificial rill. I remembered then that I had thought, two or three
times, it had improved very much since I had first seen it; and when I
asked Mr. Baxter about it last night, he said the original rill had not
water enough in it for the little cataracts and ponds, and all that, and
so he had brought down water from some other stream about half a mile
away.

"'When we went back to the cot Fanny seemed to have her suspicions
excited, and she pried into everything, and soon told me that the
furniture and all the things in the cot were only imitation of the
things plain country people use, and were, in reality, of the best
materials and wonderfully well made, and that it must have cost a lot of
money to buy all these imitations of old-fashioned, poor-folksy things.
Then she went into the garden and peered about, and told Isaac, who was
working there, that she had never seen so many different kinds of
vegetables all ripe at the same time. He touched his cap, and said that
was a compliment to his gardening. But pretty soon she saw the edge of a
flower-pot sticking above the ground, and showed it to me. I made him
dig up whole beds of things, and there was nothing but pots and pots, in
which everything was growing.

"'I went back to the house and looked about a good deal more, with Fanny
at my elbow to tell me how poor people would never have this or that or
the other thing. Then I was very angry with myself for not being able to
see things without having them pointed out to me by that Fanny Ransmore,
who was not invited to pry about and make herself disagreeable in that
way.'

"'And were you angry with me?' I asked.

"'Yes,' she answered; 'for a little while. But when I remembered the
plans I had made I thought we were about square, and that I had
concealed as much from you as you had from me. I was not angry, but I
was determined I would not stay in that mock-cot any longer. I could not
bear the sight of anything I looked at. I thought the quickest way of
settling the matter was to get rid of the whole business at once, and I
told Isaac to put a crowbar under the kitchen stove, which was full of
burning wood, and turn it over. But he was horrified, and said he might
be arrested and put in prison for doing that; and, besides, it would be
such a shame to waste so many beautiful things. Fanny and her mother
thought s