"Yes," she murmured, "it's the first time we've had anything like this since you were a boy." They both thought of his father, and the vanished days of the shanty on the hillside, and his mother thought: "People must live out their own lives in their own homes." There was something that fed the roots of her woman-nature to have this place apart, this quiet shelter where she ruled. It would be a joy to go marketing, it would be a delight to cook, and it was charming to live so intimately with her son. They were a family again. After supper they washed the dishes together, laughing and chatting. There were a hundred pleasing details to consider--where to place furniture, what to buy, whether to have a servant or not (Joe insisted on one), and all the incidents of the day to go over. And then after the dish-washing they stopped work, and sat down in the front office amid the packing-cases and the trunks and the litter and débris. The gas was lighted above them, and the old-fashioned stove which stood in the center and sprouted up a pipe nearly to the ceiling and then at right angles into the wall was made red-hot with wood and coal. Joe smoked and his mother sewed, and a hush seemed to fall on the city, broken only by the echo of passing footsteps and the mellowed thunder of the intermittent trolley-cars. "And they call this a slum," muttered Joe. In fact, save possibly for less clear air and in the summer a noise of neighbors, they might have been living in New York's finest neighborhood--almost a disappointment to two people prepared to plunge into dirt, danger, and disease.... Later Joe learned that some of the city's magazine writers had settled in the district on purpose, not because they were meeting a crisis, but because they liked it, liked its quaint old flavor, its colorful life, its alien charm, and not least, its cheaper rents. But this evening all was unknown save the joy and peace of a real home. They went to bed early, Joe in the room next the office, his mother in the adjoining room next the kitchen, but neither slept for a long time. They lay awake tingling with a strange happiness, a fine freedom, a freshness of re-created life. Only to the pioneer comes this thrill of a new-made Eden, only to those who tear themselves from the easy ruts and cut hazardous clearings in the unventured wilderness. It is like being made over, like coming with fresh heart and eyes upon the glories of the earth; it is the only youth of the world.