It seemed very strange that all the old houses were so handsome and all the new ones so ugly. A stranger might wonder, why, with the good proportions, and even a touch of simple elegance that the house builders of the last century almost always gave, their successors seemed to have no idea of either, and to take no lessons from the good models before their eyes. "Makeshifts o' splendor," sensible old Serena called some of the new houses which had run much to cheap decoration and irregular roofs and fancy colors of paint. But the old minister's elms and willows hung their green boughs before some of these architectural failures as if to kindly screen them from the passers-by. They looked like imitations of houses, one or two of them, and as if they were put down to fill spaces, and not meant to live in, as the old plain-roofed and wide-roomed dwellings are. The sober old village looked here and there as if it were a placid elderly lady upon whom a child had put it's own gay raiment. People do not consider the becomingness of a building to its surroundings as they should, but Betty did not make this clear to herself exactly, though she was sorry at the change in the familiar streets. She was more delighted than she knew because she felt so complete a sense of belongingness; as if she were indeed made of the very dust of Tideshead, and were a part of it. It was much better than getting used to new places, though even in the dullest ones she had known there was some charm and some attaching quality ever to be remembered. She liked dearly to think of some of the places where she and papa had made their home, but after all there was the temporary feeling about every one. She could bear transplanting from most of them with equanimity, no matter how deep her roots had seemed to strike.