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 the Countess responded. I'm glad to see you, anyway, glad to be home.

You'll find many changes. The town has grown a good deal.

I'm sure it has, the Countess replied. Why, here's William! How are you, William?

William grunted a reply. Hardly ever did he permit his lips to form words. Stoop-shouldered, grizzly, he had been the Poores' hired-man for thirty years. He took charge of Ella's bag, which the porter had deposited on the platform, and the strange trio walked through the carious wooden station to the carriage which, drawn by its two bay horses with long, sweeping tails, waited by the kerb. Seth Poore never could tolerate the barbarity of docking.

As they drove up Pleasant Avenue, bordered on either side with pigmy parks between the side-walks and the street, in which were planted straight rows of elms, whose branches met and even interlocked, forming a canopy, a roof of leaves over the carriage, the Countess gave little exclamations of delight. She made remarks, too, concerning the houses, each set in the centre of a spacious lawn, well back from the avenue; many of these she remembered, and she questioned her sister regarding the new ones. Who lives in that great colonial barn? The new druggist. And in that brick palace? That's Mayor Lansing's house. O! Colonel Blount's house! Is he still alive? No, when he