But these domestic upsets are to us as nothing at all; for we have struck water, and we are living, in part at least, on our own home-grown provender, and shortly we shall start the home of our dreams. And to-day something else happened that filled our cup of joy to overflowing. In the middle of the day a dainty little doe came mincing down through our garden just as confidently as though she owned the place. We are less than an hour by rail from the Grand Central Station; and yet, as I write this line, a lordly cock grouse is strutting proud and unafraid through the undergrowth not fifty yards from my workroom! Last night, when I opened my bedroom window--in the garage--to watch the distant reflection of the New York lights, flickering against the sky to the southward, I heard a dog fox yelping in the woods! Let Old Major Gloom, the human Dismal Swamp, come over now as often as pleases him. Our chalice is proof against his poison. CHAPTER VI. TWO MORE YEARS ELAPSE As the reader will have no trouble in recalling, we broke ground for our house. That, however, was after we had altered the design so often that the first lot of plans and specifications got vertigo and had to be retired in favor of a new set. For one thing, we snatched one entire floor out of the original design--just naturally jerked it out from under and cast it away and never missed it either. And likewise this was after we had shifted the site of the house from one spot to another spot and thence to a third likely spot, and finally back again to the first spot. This, however, had one thing in its favor at least. It enabled us to do our moving without taking our household goods from storage, and yet during the same period to enjoy all the pleasurable thrill of shifting about from place to place. I find moving in your mind is a much less expensive way than the other way is and gives almost as much pleasure to a woman, who--being a woman--is naturally a mover at heart. Finally, though, all this preliminary skirmishing came to an end and we actually started work on our house. I should say, we started work on what formerly we had thought was going to be our house. It turned out we were wrong. As it stands to-day, two years after the beginning, in a state approaching completion, it is a very satisfactory sort of house we think, artistically as well as from the standpoint of being practical and comfortable; but it is no longer entirely our house. The architect is responsible for the general scheme of things, for the layout and the assembling of the wood and the brick and the cement and the stonework and all that sort of thing, and to him largely will attach the credit if the effect within and without should prove pleasing to the eye. Likewise, here and there are to be found the traces of ideas which we ourselves had, but I must confess the structure is also a symposium of the modified ideas of our friends and well-wishers mated to our ideas.