"It was at her house, you remember, that I first met you," said Paston. He nodded to Mrs. Ingles, who was just moving by with the reluctant William Bates. "And a handsome house, too," declared Rosy. "Still, I suppose that hers, or even Mrs. Bates's, can't be compared with some in London." "Don't be so sure," rejoined Paston. He thought of "10, King's-gate Gardens, S. Kensington"; he would have been the last to force a comparison between that and the town-house of Cecilia Ingles. "A house is no better for being more than a home," he said, somewhat ruefully. Rosy was far from subscribing to this. Her ideal home was one that had been immemorially a palace and a show-place, with troops of servants to show the troops of tourists through. "All these places around here are nice enough," she acknowledged, "but--new. That one over there, now." She pointed across the lake to the roofs and gables of a large country-seat set on a wooded hill-top. "They have had to stain it green to make it look old and mossy." "Sometimes the appearance of age is to be preferred to the reality," observed Paston, thoughtfully. His mind was on "Boxton Park, Witham, Essex," and he was wishing devoutly enough that means were available for keeping that in a state of fresh repair equal to the state of the house where he was now staying. But Rosy was entertaining her own vision of Boxton Park. It was a spacious and glorious domain, and its noble manor house was a perfect commingling of old-time picturesqueness and modern comfort. And the peacocks paraded again on the terrace. Rosy shifted her seat on the pile of shingles in order to take a more general view of the landscape. She shrugged her shoulders slightly. "No lanes, no hedge-rows, no weirs, no coppices..." "What's the matter with these maples?" asked Fasten, abandoning himself to the American idiom. "And where are there handsomer elms than right here in Wisconsin? And what have you against those hills?" He thought of the wide flatness of Essex; what would not Boxton Park give for a foothold on such a shore, a prospect over such a sheet of rippling blue? But Rosy had her own conception of Essex. In some miraculous way it combined the sweetness of Devonshire, the fatness of Warwick, the boldness of Westmorland, the severity of Cornwall. And through this enchanting tract the fox-hounds ever sped in full, re-echoing cry. Paston gave a sudden dig with his shingle, and a lump of damp sand fell with a splash far out upon the water. "But, after all, it's dear old England," he said, plaintively. "The dearest land in all the world, I'm sure," sighed Rosy, sympathetically. She dug her toe at a single tuft of coarse grass in the midst of the sand, and wondered over his "after all." "Indeed, it is. You would like it, I'm sure." "I know I should. I shall never be happy until I've seen it." "But think of me--four thousand miles away from it." "I do," said Rosy, softly.