From the first hour, Mr. and Mrs. Blake made me feel that I shared everything in common with them, and this in so simple a manner that it was but a little while before I was at home and as if I had known them always. In this way the deathly sinking of the heart we all have in early life when first separated from those we love, I found less hard to bear. For however much the young may stray, or however desolate their lives, there will never come a time when they will not feel this sickness of the heart, this pang of parting from those dear to them, as if the breath of life were forever leaving their bodies. After breakfast the morning following my arrival it was determined to put aside all other things and give over the day to the pleasurable emotions of sight-seeing. All the belongings of the Blakes they were to show me, not grudgingly and little by little, as if of no account, but at once and in order as become the properties of those who grow old in contentment and honest industry. The house came first of all, and this was different, and in most things better than others round about—if others there could be when the nearest dwelling was miles away. Mr. Blake being a carpenter and having some skill as an architect, and being, moreover, of a domestic nature, had been at pains to bring from a distance the lumber and other needed things to make his home attractive. As if to make up for this extravagance, however, the structure was correspondingly small, so that its rooms afforded hardly space in which to move about. Among other things, he had been to some trouble to make the house secure, and this because of Mrs. Blake’s being much alone, so that in some respects it was a veritable fortress. Like the pioneer women of her day, however, she had no thought of fear any more than men have, and lived in her home, more often alone than otherwise, contented and happy, as Dido might have done before the new lover broke in upon the quiet of her life.