After this the house went again into one of its periods of eclipse, so to call them. No one even cared to look it over any more; and few people visited the neighbourhood at all since dear old Miss Clara Vardaman died and the doctor gave up practice. If it had not been for Gwynne I believe the house would have fallen down, and he must have had a hard pull getting the rest of them to contribute their share of the taxes and insurance. It was offered for sale at gradually diminishing terms; they had one chance to dispose of it to a German gentleman who proposed to convert it into a place of entertainment for the masses to be called Silberberg's Garden. Templeton was enthusiastically in favour of this plan, but figure the indignation of the two old Misses Gwynne! Even Gwynne, while he laughed, was a little ruffled. "Think of a band-stand and merry-go-round in the park," he said. "German waiters in their shirt-sleeves dashing from the house with beer-glasses and plates of wienerwurst, plumbers' apprentices and their girls waltzing and perspiring in our old ballroom, with a free fight thrown in now and then by way of variety! And how Doctor Vardaman would relish it! Picnic parties, sardine-cans, paper napkins, beer-bottles, sentimental couples spooning, band scraping and tooting 'Die Wacht am Rhein,' and 'How can I leave thee?' under his windows all day long--his property would be absolutely unsalable. We can't do it, I guess; no, not even for Silberberg's twenty-five thousand dollars!" I told him he was like the Arab who wouldn't part from his steed, in the poem at the back of the Third or Fourth Reader. "My beautiful, my beautiful----" he says; "Avaunt, tempter, I scorn thy gold!" And, springing on the horse's back, vanishes into the desert. Thus did all the Gwynnes turn up their noses--in the vernacular--at Silberberg. Templeton was very doleful. "You're missing the only chance you'll ever have to get rid of that damned old white elephant, Mr. Peters," he said. "Why not let the Dutchman have it? Lord, what difference does it make to you whether he turns it into a beer-garden or a cemetery? It's had its day." But, for once in his life, the little real-estate agent was at fault; for, on a sudden, without notice, fully five years after the house came on the market, when it had weathered through nearly every vicissitude known to houses, and its fortunes were at the dregs, the wheel took another turn--spun clean around--came full circle, in fact. Time and the hour run through the roughest day. FOOTNOTE: [3] Easy walking distance! It was between five and six squares on a very indifferent plank sidewalk, as I have cause to know!--M. S. W. CHAPTER FOUR