“Over there,” said the boy. I followed the twist of his head, and glimpsed a wooden cottage on the border of the forest, so very new that the sheathing had not yet been covered with clapboards. I stood up in the buckboard and saw that it was a story and a half high, and could have had four or five rooms in it. The bare, curtainless windows were set in the unpainted frames, but the front door seemed not to be hung yet. The people meant to winter there, however, for the sod was banked up against the wooden underpinning; a stovepipe stuck out of the roof of a little wing behind. While I gazed a young-looking woman came to the door, as if she had been drawn by our talk with the children, and then she jumped down from the threshold, which still wanted a doorstep, and came slowly out to us. The children ran to her with their coppers, and then followed her back to us. Mrs. Makely called to her before she reached us: “I hope you weren’t frightened. We didn’t drive over any of them.” “Oh, I wasn’t frightened,” said the young woman. “It’s a very safe place to bring up children, in the country, and I never feel uneasy about them.” “Yes, if they are not under the horses’ feet,” said Mrs. Makely, mingling instruction and amusement very judiciously in her reply. “Are they all yours?” “Only five,” said the mother, and she pointed to the alien in her flock. “He’s my sister’s. She lives just below here.” Her children had grouped themselves about her, and she kept passing her hands caressingly over their little heads as she talked. “My sister has nine children, but she has the rest at church with her to-day.” “You don’t speak like an American,” Mrs. Makely suggested. “No, we’re English. Our husbands work in the quarry. That’s _my_ little palace.” The woman nodded her head toward the cottage. “It’s going to be very nice,” said Mrs. Makely, with an evident perception of her pride in it. “Yes, if we ever get money to finish it. Thank you for the children.” “Oh, it was this gentleman.” Mrs. Makely indicated me, and I bore the merit of my good action as modestly as I could. “Then thank _you_, sir,” said the young woman, and she asked Mrs. Makely: “You’re not living about here, ma’am?” “Oh no, we’re staying at the hotel.” “At the hotel! It must be very dear, there.” “Yes, it is expensive,” said Mrs. Makely, with a note of that satisfaction in her voice which we all feel in spending a great deal of money. “But I suppose you can afford it,” said the woman, whose eye was running hungrily over Mrs. Makely’s pretty costume. “Some are poor, and some are rich. That’s the way the world has to be made up, isn’t it?”