To be sure our delight was somewhat damped the next day by the coldness with which my good old uncle, Jeremiah Standfast, who happened along at precisely this crisis, listened to our visions. "You'll find it _pleasant_, children, in the summer time," said the hard-fisted old man, twirling his blue-checked pocket handkerchief; "but I'm sorry you've gone in debt for the land." "O, but we shall soon save that--it's so much cheaper living in the country!" said both of us together. "Well, as to that, I don't think it is to city-bred folks." Here I broke in with a flood of accounts of Mr. B.'s peach trees, and Mrs. B.'s strawberries, butter, apricots, etc.., etc..; to which the old gentleman listened with such a long, leathery, unmoved quietude of visage as quite provoked me, and gave me the worst possible opinion of his judgment. I was disappointed too; for, as he was reckoned one of the best practical farmers in the county, I had counted on an enthusiastic sympathy with all my agricultural designs. "I tell you what, children," he said, "a body can live in the country, as you say, amazin' cheap; but then a body must _know how_"--and my uncle spread his pocket handkerchief thoughtfully out upon his knees, and shook his head gravely. I thought him a terribly slow, stupid old body, and wondered how I had always entertained so high an opinion of his sense. "He is evidently getting old," said I to my wife; "his judgment is not what it used to be." At all events, our place was bought, and we moved out, well pleased, the first morning in April, not at all remembering the ill savor of that day for matters of wisdom. Our place was a pretty cottage, about two miles from the city, with grounds that had been tastefully laid out. There was no lack of winding paths, arbors, flower borders, and rosebushes, with which my wife was especially pleased. There was a little green lot, strolling off down to a brook, with a thick grove of trees at the end, where our cow was to be pastured.