pines beside it, and beyond, a hill with a long ribbon of road leading up to a real New England white farmhouse with a splash of red barn beside it, we couldn't think kindly of any other spot in town. After we had sat down on the stone wall that ran right square through the back of the lot, and watched a glorious sunset reflected in the lake below, Will said, "By Jove, we'll have this!" There were six old apple-trees on the lot, a wild cherry and a dear little waif of a pine-tree. Will and I made a solemn vow to each other that we would build a cheap house, and get along a while longer with one maid for the sake of that lovely sunset every night when we ate supper. I said I'd as soon live in a lean-to. Will said we'd live just where we were for another year until we could afford to put up even a lean-to. We bought the darling of our hearts seven days later. It used up over two-thirds of our fourteen-thousand-dollar house fund.
We ate picnic suppers on our stone wall, and winter-times drank hot coffee there boiled over a tiny bon-fire built in the rocks, for three solid years before we began to dig the cellar of our lean-to. I had hollyhocks and a whole row of Canterbury-bells flowering in our garden for two springs before there was a door and some steps to lead out to it. It's all very well to vow you'll build a cheap house, but it's another thing to do it. Of course we had to have plumbing and heat; electric light fixtures seemed a necessity too, as well as a few doors here and there.
Will and I literally laboured over those plans. They had to undergo a dreadful series of operations. Every spring when it seemed to us as if we couldn't
