Two months later, when we had joined the landed classes, the consignment arrived--peach, pear, quince, cherry and apple. I was quite shocked at the appearance of the various items when we undid the wrappings. The pictures from which I had made my selections showed splendid trees, thick with foliage and laden with the most delicious fruit imaginable. But here, seemingly, was merely a collection of golf clubs in a crude and unfinished state--that is to say, they were about the right length and the right thickness to make golf clubs, but were unfinished to the extent that they had small tentacles or roots adhering to them at their butt ends. However, our gardener--we had acquired a gardener by then--was of the opinion that they might develop into something. Having advanced this exceedingly sanguine and optimistic belief, he took out a pocket-knife and further maimed the poor little things by pruning off certain minute sprouts or nubs or sprigs that grew upon them; and then he stuck them in the earth. Nevertheless, they grew. At this hour they are still growing, and in time I think they may bear fruit. As a promise of future productivity they bore leaves during the summer--not many leaves, but still enough leaves to keep them from looking so much like walking sticks, and just enough leaves to nourish certain varieties of worms. I sincerely trust the reader will not think I have been exaggerating in detailing my dealings with the artificers, agents and solicitors who descended upon us when the hue and cry--personally I have never seen a hue, nor, to the best of my knowledge, have I ever heard one; but it is customary to speak of it in connection with a cry and I do so--when, as I say, the presumable hue and the indubitable cry were raised in regard to our ambition to own a country place. Believe me, I am but telling the plain, unvarnished truth. And now we come to the home-seeking enterprise: Sometimes alone, but more frequently in the company of friends, we toured Westchester, its main highways and its back roads, its nooks and its corners, until we felt that we knew its topography much better than many born and reared in it. Reason totters on her throne when confronted with the task of trying to remember how many places we looked at--places done, places overdone, places underdone, and places undone. Wherever we went, though, one of two baffling situations invariably arose: If we liked a place the price for that place uniformly would be out of our financial reach. If the price were within our reach the place failed to satisfy our desires.