Derrice, whose life for the last few days had been one of tedious monotony, watched with interest this self-conscious high priest, who, with his air of profound mystery, so slowly forwarded the ceremonies connected with the brewing of a cup of tea. "Has Miss Chelda come in yet, Prosperity?" asked Miss Gastonguay, abruptly. "No, ma'am," he said, hanging his head like a sheepish, fooling boy, and hurrying from the room. "Let us have the table in the window," exclaimed Miss Gastonguay, "so we can take in the view," and at imminent danger of upsetting it she seized the fragile article of furniture and dragged it across the room. The gray-haired Prosperity, coming in with a tray, looked about him in bewilderment, until, finally discovering the table near the long, narrow window, he deposited his burden on it, and tilted himself in a sideways fashion from the room. Miss Gastonguay seated herself, silently pointing to a chair opposite. Derrice obediently took up her position close to the window. A blustering, imperial March sun was rolling a purple eye over the hills across the river as if choosing the fittest place for his descent to rest, and suddenly poured a sheaf of blood and yellow rays upon the top of the highest house. Miss Gastonguay leaned back in her chair, her face contracted as if in physical pain. "How unearthly it is,--how pitiful are we!" Derrice turned to her in slight surprise. "We are nothing but earthworms," she said, vehemently, "nothing--" and the little golden spoon in her hand trembled visibly. "Crawling ignobly over the earth's surface. Here to-day, gone to-morrow, and can't get what we want while we stay--Do you take sugar in your tea?" "Thank you--" "We are too materialistic, too luxurious in our tastes," Miss Gastonguay went on. "I think of this great nation and tremble, so young, so prosperous,--what is to be the end of us? Are we to follow Greece and Rome?" Derrice in quiet interest stirred her tea and examined the wrinkled, composite face opposite,--at times so square, so set, so taciturn; at others so vivacious, so mobile, so open in expression. "I have always fancied that New England was a poor sort of a place," she said, finally. "I dare say," observed her hostess, ironically, "you thought our towns were desolate, our farms deserted, our young men gone West, that the people who remained lived in slab houses with an occasional thing called an 'apple bee' by way of amusement." "Well, not exactly." "I say the trouble is not poverty, but abundance," responded Miss Gastonguay, warmly. "There are poor districts, I will not deny it, especially in back-woods localities or away from railroads, but I do not know that life. I have been brought up in towns. I wish I had not. If I had my life to live over, I would choose the cabin in the wilderness. Do you know who my most prized ancestor was?" "No, I do not." "Go look at him," and Miss Gastonguay waved her hand toward the opposite end of the apartment.