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So we had them. The Peon and David drove in to Chatterton daily and took the train for business and school; and I fed the birds and followed Uncle Milton, and drank in the changing beauties of earth and sky. And all summer we watched our home grow, from cellar to roof-tree, till it became a thing complete, and fitted into the landscape for which it was designed.

We set it on the old home’s hill, which overlooked the countryside, and faced it toward the sunrising. The dark lines of cedars which had bordered the approach to the old house were left at one side, and the road, curving from their upper end, swept into full sunshine and passed under a great beech, which spread its tiers of leaves above the doorway. It is an unpretentious house, rambling about pretty much as it pleases in its efforts to give southern and eastern and western exposures to all the rooms. Porches are everywhere, and the windows either open on them, like doors, or stop a little above the floor at low, cushioned seats, which tempt one to sink down and wonder once again at the beauty of this fair country of middle Tennessee. There are no curtains at the windows, nor mats of vines outside. But up the widely-separated columns of the porches run clematis and jasmines which cross the great openings in narrow bands, above and below. So all summer the fretwork of green leaves frames the landscape, a perfect, yet everchanging picture in each of the wide spaces. The east end of the living-room is of glass, and my flowers flourish there in winter time. In my own room the bed stands in a deep recess formed all of windows on the three sides. A low seat runs under them within reach of the bed. All through the dark, sleepless night I can lie there and watch for the first paling of the eastern sky, and follow the level light as it moves softly along the southern hills, creating the shadows which make the light so clear.