When I reflect on the cold, miserable baths we have taken and the other privations you and I have endured all these years it makes me heartsick to think what I've neglected." "But nine hundred dollars, Joseph!" grandmother interposed with a scandalized expression.

"That's an awful bill!" "Yes," the old Squire admitted, "but we shall survive it." Grandmother was right about our neighbors.

What they said among themselves would no doubt have been illuminating if we had heard it; but they maintained complete silence when we were present.

But we noticed that when they called at the farmhouse they cast curious and perhaps envious glances at the new lean-to.
Then an amusing thing happened.

We had been enjoying Bethesda for a few weeks, but had not yet got past our daily pride in it, when one hot evening in the latter part of June who should come driving into the yard but David Barker, "the Burns of Maine," a poet and humorist of state-wide renown.
The old Squire had met him several times; but his visit that night was accidental.