No animal except man digs and plants
Strawberries and trout. How is that for a combination?
Fate produced a man who had chickens to sell
I planted some canterbury-bells
And how the family did grow up!
Was it the spirit of our garden?
ILLUSTRATIONS
| Once more it was a habitation and a home | Frontispiece |
| "And here is your house," said William C. Westbury | Facing p 6 |
| They formed a board of appraisal. All of them knew that cellar and were intimately acquainted with its contents | 44 |
| I made about three leaps and grabbed it, and a second later had it hooked and was back, the lightning at my heels | 68 |
| Sometimes at the end of the day, as I sat by the waning embers, and watched her moving to and fro between me and the fading autumn fields | 110 |
| "Good afternoon," I said. "Can you tell us where we are?" | 156 |
| I remember that as a golden summer, an enthusiastic summer, and, on the whole, a successful one | 206 |
| It was on a winter evening that I drove our car back to its old place in the barn, after its long journeyings by land and sea | 238 |
CHAPTER ONE
I
All my life I had dreamed of owning a brook
ust below the brow of the hill one of the traces broke (it was in the horse-and-wagon days of a dozen years or so ago), and, if our driver had not been a prompt man our adventure might have come to grief when it was scarcely begun. As it was, we climbed on foot to the top, and waited while he went into a poor old wreck of a house to borrow a string for repairs.
We wondered if the house we were going to see would be like this one. It was of no special design and it had never had a period. It was just a house, built out of some one's urgent need and a lean purse. In the fifty years or so of its existence it had warped and lurched and become sway-backed and old—oh, so old and dilapidated—without becoming in the least antique, but just dismal and disreputable—a veritable pariah of architecture. We thought this too bad, for the situation, with its view down a little valley and in the distance the hazy hills, was the sort of thing that, common as it is in Connecticut, never loses its charm. Never mind, we said, perhaps "our house" would have a view, too.
But then our trace was mended and we went along—happily, for it was sunny weather and summer-time, and, though parents of a family of three, we were still young enough to find pleasure in novelty and a surprise at every turn. Our driver was not a communicative