"No, I haven't seen them." The bright-faced little lady stood in the doorway glancing over my shoulder out toward the sunny road. "Have you seem them to-day, Nellie?" she called into the dusky sitting-room. "No," she turned back to me, "we haven't seen them. And," she added, with gay directness, "nobody could get by the house _without_ our seeing them; I'm sure of that!" Her remark pleased me immensely. I like this frank interest in the Road very much. When I am at home, I have it myself, and I have stopped being ashamed of it. When I am on the Road, I like to know that I am an object of interest to the dwellers in the houses I pass. I look up at the windows, whose tiny panes reflect the brightness of outdoors and tell me nothing of the life within, and I like to think that some one behind them knows that I am going by. Often there is some sign of recognition--a motion of the hand through a parted curtain, or rarely a smiling face; now and then some one looks out from a doorway to send a greeting, or glances up from the garden or the well; but even without these tokens I still have the sense of being noticed, and I find it pleasant and companionable. In the city, when I go to see a friend, I approach a house that gives no sign. I mount to a noncommittal vestibule and push an impersonal button, and after the other necessary preliminaries I find my friends. In the country as I drive up to the house I notice curtains stirring, I hear voices, and before I have had time to get out and find the hitch-rope every person in the house is either at the gate or standing in the doorway. Our visit is begun before we have left the Road, the hospitable, social Road. Such ways would probably not do for the city. So much the worse for the city. The country ways are best. Everything that happens along the Road has the social touch. In the city, orders are given by telephone, and when the delivery wagon comes, it sweeps up with a rush, the boy seizes a basket and jumps out, runs to the back door, shouts the name of the owner, slams down his goods, and dashes back to the wagon, with a crisp "Git-up!" to the well-trained horse, who starts forward while his driver is still mounting to his seat. Not so in the country. The wagon draws peacefully out to the side of the Road, and the horse falls to nibbling grass if he is unchecked, or to browsing on my rosebushes if he is not. If it is the grocer's wagon, the boy comes around to the back porch and we discuss what supplies will probably be needed by the time of his next visit. Incidentally, we talk about weather and crops and woodchucks and trout, or bass or partridges, according to the season. If it is the meat cart or the fish wagon, I seize a platter and go out, the back flap of the cart is lifted up, I step under its shade and peer in, considering what is offered me and deciding what I will have plucked out for me to carry back to the house.