its rooms, however, is still warm with earth-lined walls, and looks out far to sea.
The young couple throve and prospered. Children were born in the single room of the little low dwelling; played about between its walls of bare brown wood; were warmed and fed by its great open hearth with the Colonial oven, that took up nearly all one side of the place; and peeped through its one window at the great spread of sea down there beyond the garden, and at the snow-peaks over the sea. The brood all flourished; and by and by had grown so much, both in size and numbers, that the roof which sheltered them must needs grow too; the wharé had now to delegate some of its functions, part with some of its importance, and, instead of providing a whole home by itself, become one room, merely, among others.
But it was still the chief room, kitchen, dining-room, parlour, and family living-room. Within this little square of space that had so faithfully nursed their infant spring and outgush, the flowing, growing currents of affairs circled more vigorously than ever; until at last they overflowed it. A new kitchen was then built at the other end of the house, and the old one, separated from it by a whole chain of bedrooms, became a sitting-room. Nobody in that house, however, had much leisure to sit; and the stream of activity, though running now more briskly than ever, was quite diverted in its course from the old kitchen, and visited it only at rare intervals, and then but meagrely. The old room, often for weeks together, was left to its silent survey of sea and garden, and its memories of past days.
By and by, as the years went on, the young couple
