"We'll roast 'em after supper," said her father. "Toddle along now and wash up." She put up a rosy, beaming face to be kissed and dashed away toward the house. I tried to remember what either of my two girls had been like at her age, but for some strange reason I could not. Across the road the fertile countryside sloped away into a distant valley, hemmed in by dim blue hills, below which the sun had already sunk, leaving only a gilded edge behind. The air was filled with a soft, smoky haze. A church bell in the village struck six o'clock. "_The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way_," I murmured. "For 'plowman' read 'golfer,'" smiled my host. "By George, though--it is pretty good to be alive!" The air had turned crisp and we both instinctively took a couple of deep breaths. "Makes the city look like thirty cents!" he ejaculated. "Of course it isn't like New York or Southampton." "No, thank God! It isn't!" I muttered as we wandered toward the house. "I hope you don't mind an early supper," apologized Mrs. Hastings as we entered; "but Jim gets absolutely ravenous. You see, on weekdays his lunch is at best a movable feast." Our promptly served meal consisted of soup, scrambled eggs and bacon, broiled chops, fried potatoes, peas, salad, apple pie, cheese, grapes plucked fresh from the garden wall, and black coffee, distilled from a shining coffee machine. Mrs. Hastings brought the things hot from the kitchen and dished them herself. Tom and Sylvia, carefully spruced up, ate prodigiously and then helped clear away the dishes, while I produced my cigar case. Then Hastings led me across the hall to a room about twelve feet square, the walls of which were lined with books, where a wood fire was already crackling cozily. Motioning me to an old leather armchair, he pulled up a wooden rocker before the mantel and, leaning over, laid a regiment of chestnuts before the blazing logs. I stretched out my legs and took a long pull on one of my Carona-Caronas. It all seemed too good to be true. Only six hours before in my marble entrance hall I had listened disgustedly to the cackle of my wife's luncheon party behind the tapestry of my own dining room. After all, how easy it was to be happy! Here was Hastings, jolly as a clam and living like a prince on--what? I wondered. "Hastings," I said, "do you mind telling me how much it costs you to live like this?" "Not at all," he replied--"though I never figured it out exactly. Let's see. Five per cent on the cost of the place--say, two hundred dollars. Repairs and insurance a hundred. That's three hundred, isn't it? We pay the hired man thirty-five dollars and Carmen eighteen dollars a month, and give 'em their board--about six hundred and fifty more. So far nine hundred and fifty. Our vegetables and milk cost us practically nothing--meat and groceries about seventy-five a month--nine hundred a year.