She was on her favorite topic. She forgot that she was cold, wet, miserable, and a frightful anxiety to her family. "But why be an innkeeper?" asked Herring. "Why not set up as a landscape-gardener?" "I don't know enough. But I've often thought----" "I've got five hundred acres outside of Boston that I'd like to turn you loose on." "You speak as if I were a goat." "The first thing to do is to drain the swamps. Now, I'll make you a proposition. I can't put it in writing, because it's too dark to see and I have no writing materials, but there is nothing fishy about us Herrings. You to landscape my place for me, cause a suitable house to be built, and so forth; I to pay you a thousand dollars a month, and a five per cent commission on the total expenditure." "And what might _that_ amount to?" "What you please," said Herring politely. "Who says Bostonians are cold?" exclaimed Phyllis. And there began to float through her head lovely visions of landscapes of her own making. "You're still joking, aren't you?" she said after a while. "I don't know landscapes well enough to joke about them," he said. "But I can't design a house!" "Oh, you will have architects to do that part. You just pick the general type." "What kind of a house do you want?" "It depends on what kind of a house _you_ want." "Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "what fun it would be!" "Will you do it?" She was tempted beyond her strength. "Yes," she said, and began to talk with irresponsible delight and enthusiasm. "Ah," thought Herring to himself, "find out what really interests a girl and she'll forget all her troubles." It began suddenly to grow light. "Good heavens!" exclaimed Phyllis. "The woods must be on fire! Oh, the poor trees!" "It isn't fire," said Herring, "it's the moon--'Queen and huntress, chaste and fair--goddess excellently bright'--was ever such luck! I hoped we were going to stand here cosily all night talking about marigolds and cowslips and wallpapers, and now it's our duty to move on. Come, Goody Two Shoes, Policeman Moon has told us to move on. I shall never forget this spot. And I shan't ever be able to find it again." They toiled forward a little way, and lo! upon a sudden, they came to firm and rocky land that sloped abruptly upward from the swamp. They climbed for several hundred feet and came out upon a bare hilltop, from which could be seen billows of forest and one great horn of Half Moon Lake, silver in the moonlight. "Why, it isn't a mile to camp," said Phyllis. She swayed a little, tottered, rocked backward and then forward, and fell against Herring's breast in a dead faint. In a few moments she came to and found that she was being carried in strong arms. It was a novel, delicious, and restful sensation--one which it seemed immensely sensible to prolong. She did not, then, immediately open her eyes. She heard a voice cheerful, but very much out of breath, murmuring over her: