"Oh, look, Torchy!" Vee would exclaim about twice a minute when she discovered something new. You know, we'd been in the house only once before, and then we'd looked around just casual. And if you want to find out how little you really see when you think you're lookin', you want to make a deal like that once--buy a joint just as it stands, and then, a few days after, camp down in it and tot up what you've really got. Why, say, you'd 'most thought we'd been blindfolded that first time. Course, this was different. Now we was takin' stock, you might say, of the things we was goin' to live with. And, believe me, I never had any idea I'd ever own such a collection, or so big a slice of the U. S. A. "Only think, Torchy," says Vee, after we've made the rounds inside. "Ten rooms, just for us!" "Twelve, countin' the cellar and attic," says I. "But there's more outside, ain't there?" Yep, there was. There was an old stable that had been turned into a garage, with a couple of rooms finished off upstairs. Then there was a carriage shed, with more rooms over that, also a chicken house beyond. And stowed away in odd corners was all kinds of junk that might be more or less useful to have: a couple of lawn-mowers, an old sleigh hoisted up on the rafters of the carriage house, a weird old buggy, a plow, a grindstone, a collection of old chairs and sofas that had seen better days, a birch-bark canoe--things like that. Then there was our lily pond. We had to walk all round that, poke in with a pole to see how deep it might be, and wonder if there was any fish in it. On beyond was some trees--apple and pear and cherry, accordin' to Vee, and 'way at the back a tall cedar hedge. "Why, it's almost an estate," says Vee. "Nearly five acres, you know. How does it seem, Torchy, to think that all this is ours?" "How?" says I. "Why, I feel like I was the Grand Gazinkus of Gazook." But, at that, my feelin's wa'n't a marker to the emotions Professor Leon Battou, our artist-chef, manages to work up. He's so tickled at gettin' back to the country and away from the city, where him and Madame Battou come so near starvin' on the street, that he goes skippin' around like a sunshine kid, pattin' the trees, droppin' down on his hands and knees in the grass to dig up dandelions, and keepin' up a steady stream of explosive French and rapid-fire English. "Ah, but it is all so good!" says he. "_Le bleu ciel, les fleurs, les oiseaux! C'est bonne, tres bonne. Ne c'est pas?_" "I expect it is, Leon," says I. "Although I might not state it just that way myself. Picked out a spot yet for your garden?"