Land, land, the things we’d found we could spare and that we’d piled in that house--stuff that we hadn’t known we had and that we couldn’t miss if we’d tried, but had hung on to sole and only because we were deformed into economizing that way. Honestly, I believe more folks economizes by keeping old truck around than is extravagant by throwing new stuff away. I don’t stand up for either, but I well know which has the most germs in. What we’d sent we’d cleaned thorough. And it was clean as wax there--but the roof was being mended and the ceiling was being fixed and carpets were going down. And when we got done with it, I tell you that little house looked as cozy as a Pullman car--and I don’t know anything whatever that looks cozier after you’ve set up in the day coach all night. And lions and lambs laying down together on swords and plow-shares were nothing to the way we worked together all day long. We had to jump to keep out of the way of being “been-nice” to so’s to get a chance to be nice ourselves. I liked to be there. I like to think about it since. At five o’clock, old Mis’ Lockmeyer, dead-tuckered, was standing in the door with a corner of her apron caught up in the band, when Jem drove me away. “Leave her come out any time now,” she says, “we’re ready for her. Mebbe she’ll be mad but, land--even if she is, I can’t be sorry we done it. It’s been as enjoyable,” she says, “as anything I’ve ever done.” I looked back at her, and at all the other women back of her and in the windows, and at Mis’ Pettibone and Mis’ Puppy leaning on the same sill, and I nodded; and Mis’ Puppy--well, it was faint and ladylike, but just the same the look that we give each other was far, far more than a squint, and it was bordering on, and right up to, a regular wink. When I come in sight of my house I was so busy thinking how she’d like hers that I didn’t see for a minute what my front yard had in it. And when I did see, my heart kind of went _plap!_--but a pleasant plap. My front yard looked so exactly the way I’d used to dream of it looking, and it never had. It was little and neat and green, with flowers and a white door-step as usual, but out in front was a little girl, with my clothes-rope doubled up for lines, and she was driving round and round the pansy bed a little boy. Just before I got to the gate, and before they saw me, they dropped the rope and went off around the house hand in hand, like they’d known each other all their days. “I wish everybody was like that,” thinks I, and went in my front door and through to the dining-room. And there, sitting on my couch with their arms around each other, was the Toll Gate House lady and my roomer, Mr. Dombledon. “Well,” says I. “Sudden--but real friendly!” I see I had to say something, for they didn’t seem real capable of it. And besides, I’d begun to suspicion, deep in the part of the heart that ain’t never surprised at love anywheres.