Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/71

Rh The house was not forbidding, Felicia decided—only tired, and very shabby. The burdocks at the doorstep could be easily disposed of. It was a wide stone doorstep, as she had hoped and from it, though there was not much view of the bay, there were nice things to be seen. Before it, the orchard dropped away at one side, leaving a wide vista of brown meadows, sown with more of the pointy trees and grayed here and there by rocks; beyond that, a silver slip of water, and the far shore blue, blue in the distance. To the right of the house the land rolled away over another dun meadow that stopped at a rather civilized-looking hedge, above which rose a dense tumble of high trees. To the left lay the overgrown dooryard, the old lichened stone wall, and the sagging gate which opened to Winterbottom Road. Felicia tried to describe it all to Kirk, and wondered as she gazed at him, standing beside her with the eager, listening look his face so often wore, how much of it could mean anything to him but an incomprehensible string of words.

Ken returned from Asquam in Hop's chariot, surrounded by bundles.

"Luxury!" he proclaimed, when the spoils