Mr. Petter arose and, still holding the stuffed squirrel in his hand, stood with his back to the fire. "It strikes me, Susan," said he, looking reflectively in front of him, "that our lives are very seldom built with a hall through the middle and the rooms alike on both sides. I don't think we'd like it if they were. They would be stupid and humdrum. The right sort of a life should have its ups and downs, its ins and outs, its different levels, its outside stairs and its inside stairs, its balconies, windows and roofs of different periods and different styles. This is education. These things are the advantages that our lives get from the lives of others. "Now, for myself, I like the place I live in to resemble my life and that of the people about me. And I am sure that nothing could be better suited to all that than the Squirrel Inn. "All sorts of things come into our lives, and when a thing like Lanigan Beam comes into it, what could be better than to lodge it in a place where it can go no farther? and if something of a high order, something backed up by Matthew Vassar, but which is a little foreign, and not altogether of our kind, how well to be able to put that in a noble and elevated position, where it can have every advantage and can go and come, without being naturalized or made a part of us. Think, too, how high excellence can be worthily lodged, with the comforts of the North and the beauties of the South, as in the case of Mrs. Cristie's rooms; and how blooded service is not forced into a garret, but is quartered in a manner which shows that the blood is recognized and the service ignored." "If I had known what she was when she came," remarked Mrs. Petter, "I should have put her on the top floor." "Think, too," continued the landlord, "of noble sentiments, high aspirations, and deep learning, lodged of their own free will--for it appears that there was no necessity for it--so near as to answer every need of social domesticity, and yet in a manner so free and apart as to allow undisturbed and undisturbing reveries beneath the stars, and such other irregular manifestations of genius as are common to the gifted." "Such as coming late to meals," interpolated the lady. "Think, too," Mr. Petter went on to say, speaking in a more earnest voice--"think, too, of a life or a house in which there is no place for a Calthea Rose; in which she cannot exist, and which, I am happy to say, she has always opposed and condemned." Mrs. Petter slightly yawned. "All that sounds very well," she said, "and there may be truth in it; but, after all, here we are alone by ourselves, and, so far as I can see, no chance of being less lonely next season, for your rules keep out all common folks, and we can't count on the people who were here this year coming again." Mr. Petter smiled. "There is no reason to suppose," he said, "that next season we shall not be favored with the company of the Rockmores of Germantown."