Shrewd Martha Corkle foresaw the probable outcome the day that the foundation-stone for the first cottage was laid, even before our prettiest flower-hedged lane was shorn and torn up to make it into a macadam road, in order to shorten the time, for motor vehicles, between the Bluffs and the station by possibly three minutes.  Not that the people were obliged to be on time for early trains, for they are mostly the reapers of other people’s sowing; but to men of a certain calibre, born for activity, the feeling that, simply for the pleasure of it, they can wait until the very latest moment and still get there, is an amusement savouring of both chance and power.

“Yes, Mrs. Evan,” said Martha, with as much of a sniff as she felt compatible with her dignity, “I knows colernies of folks not born to or loving the soil, but just trying to get something temporary out o’ it in the way o’ pleasure, as rabbits, or mayhap bad smelling water for the rheumatics. (It was the waters Lunnon swells came for down on the old estate.) To my thinkin’ these pleasure colernies is bad things; they settles as senseless as a swarm of bees, just because their leader’s lit there first; and when they’ve buzzed themselves out and moved on, like as not some sillies as has come gapin’ too close is bit fatal or poisoned for life.”

Well-a-day!  Evan says that I take things to heart that belong to the head alone, while father says that, to his mind, feeling is much more of a need to-day than logic; so what can I do but still stumble along according to feeling.

A shout from beneath the window, then a soft snowball on it, the signal that the fort is finished,—­yes, and the old Christmas tree stuck up top as a standard.  Richard has built a queer-looking snow man with red knobs all over his chest and stomach, while Ian has achieved several most curious looking things with carrot horns,—­whatever are they?  Father has just driven in, and is laughing heartily, and Evan is waving to me.

* * * * *

Calm reigns again.  The fort has surrendered, the final charge having been led by Corney Delaney.  We’ve had hot milk all around, father has retired to the study to decipher a complicated letter from Aunt Lot, Evan has taken the boys into the den for a drawing lesson, and the mystery of the snow man is solved.

We do not intend to have the boys learn any regular lessons before another fall, but for the last two years I have managed that they should sit still and be occupied with something every morning, so that they may learn how to keep quiet without its being a strain,—­shelling peas, cutting papers for jelly pots, stringing popcorn for the hospital Christmas tree, seeding raisins with a dozen for pay at the end—­this latter is an heroic feat when it is accomplished without drawing the pay on the instalment plan—­and many other little tasks, varied according to season.

Ian has a quick eye and comprehension, and he is extremely colour sensitive, but healthily ignorant of book learning, while Richard, how we do not know, has learned to read in a fashion of his own, not seeming yet to separate letters or words, but “swallowing the sense in lumps,” as Martha puts it.