What I did say caused her to continue: "The picture you drew of liking to have things for the sake of having them was rather like a nightmare to me. Think of a life in which one could never belong to one's self, or to one another, because one was always bowed down by the weight of possessions! And as we got older they would accumulate more and more, until we became stifled by them. Why, one might even come to take no pleasure in any beautiful things that didn't belong to one. One might even envy other people what they had. Why should anybody _want_ to burden themselves in that way?" "Well, of course," I said, "one _can_ do all right without a lot of things around one." "Oh, yes; one would be so much happier. Beatrice Coghill, a friend of mine, married about a year ago, and they took a little farm in the country. I went to stay with them there. It was just large enough for them to do all the work themselves. They live in the open air all day long, and work hard, and never have a care in the world. She makes her little home so sweet for her husband, and she told me she was always thinking about it, and about him when he is out working in the fields. In the evenings they read, and she plays to him. They don't mind the long winters because they are always together, and do what they like doing indoors. And in the summer they have their garden, and their walks about the quiet fields. Sometimes they take a little holiday, and come into Culbut to see their friends, and to hear some music, but they are always glad to get back to their happy little home. They never have any of the annoyances that we go through here every day of our lives, and they can look forward to growing old together, and keeping all their simple happiness to the end." "My darling," I said. "That is a very pretty picture." And, indeed, it seemed to me, as painted by Miriam, the prettiest sort of picture. If I could make her happy, and myself happy with her, by living a life of bodily toil in the open air, which is the best sort of toil, and feeding the demands of the brain in the hours that seem set apart by nature for such pursuits, then a little farm, by all means.