Without having specialized in music, nevertheless Percy had improved the frequent opportunities he had had, especially while at the university, and he had learned to appreciate quality in the musical world. Consequently he was not a little surprised and greatly pleased to sit and listen to a class of music that he had never before heard rendered in country places; but, as he listened for Adelaide's singing in chorus, duet, and solo, he found himself wondering whether the eye or the voice more clearly revealed the soul. "It seemed like the old times," said the grandmother, with something like a sigh, as she took her place in the carriage. "If our land was only like it used to be! but it's become so mighty poor our children can't have many advantages these days. The Harcourt's and Staunton's whom you met are descendants of ancestors once well known in this state." "It seems to me that the land need not have grown poor," said Percy. "If the land was once productive, its fertility ought to be maintained by the return of the essential materials removed in crops or destroyed by cultivation. Surely land need not become poor; but of course I know too little about this land to suggest at the present time what method could best be adopted for its improvement." "We can tell you what the best method is," she quickly replied. "Just put on plenty of ordinary farm fertilizer, but, laws, we don't have enough to cover fifty acres a year." For a time each seemed lost in thought, or listening to the husband and wife who sat in the front seat quietly talking of the evening's performances. Percy recognized some of the names they mentioned as belonging to persons to whom he had been presented at the church. It gradually dawned upon him that he had spent the evening with the aristocracy of the Blue Mound neighborhood. Culture, refinement, and poverty were the chief characteristics of the people who had been assembled. "It need not have been," he repeated to himself; "surely, it need not have been, "and then he wondered if these were not much sadder words than the oft repeated "it might have been." "May I ask where your people came from, Mrs. West?" he questioned. "Where we came from?" she repeated, "I don't quite understand." "Excuse me," said Percy, "but in the West it is so common to ask people where they are from. You know the West is settled with people from all sections of the East, and many from Europe and from Canada, and I thought your ancestors may have moved here from some other state, as from Pennsylvania for example, where my mother's people once lived."