“You have thought of it, too,” exclaimed Desire.

“Of what?” asked Mr. Kirkbright, turning toward her.

“Of what you might make this place.”

“What would you make of it?”

They were a little apart, by themselves, again.  It kept happening so.  Miss Kirkbright and Sylvie had a great deal to say to each other.

“I would make it a moral sanatorium.  I would take people in here, and nurse them up by beautiful living, till they were ready to begin the world again; and then I would have the little new world, of work and business, waiting just outside.  I would have rooms for them here, that they should feel the own-ness of; flowers to tend; ferneries in the windows; they could make them from these beautiful woods, and send them away to the cities; that would be a business at the very first!  I would have all the lovely, natural ways of living to win them back by,—­to teach them pure things; yes,—­and I would have the chapel to teach them the real gospel in!  That bird-cage in the gallery window made me think of it all, I believe,” she ended, bringing herself back out of her enthusiasm with a recollection.

“I knew you could tell me how,” said Mr. Kirkbright, quietly.

“How Hazel would rejoice in this place!  It is a place to set any one dreaming, I think; because, perhaps, as Miss Kirkbright said, the man was in a dream when he planned it.”

“I mean to try if one dream cannot be lived,” said Christopher Kirkbright.  “At any rate, let us have the vision out, while we are about it!  What do you think of brickmaking for the hard, rough working men, with families, with those cottages and more like them to live in; and paper-making, in mills down there, for others; for the women and children, especially.  Paper for hangings, say; then, some time or other, the printing works, and the designing?  Might it not all grow?  And then wouldn’t we have a ladder all the way up, for them to climb by,—­out of the clay and common toil to art and beauty?”

“You can dream delightfully, Mr. Kirkbright.”

“I will see if I cannot begin to turn it into fact, and make it pay,” he answered.  “Pay itself, and keep itself going.  I do not need to look for my fortune from it.  The fortune is to be put into it.  But I have no right to lose,—­to throw away,—­the fortune.  It must come by degrees, like all things.  You know some people say that God dreamed the heavens and the earth in those six wonderful days, and then took his millions of years for the everlasting making, with the Sabbath of his divine satisfaction between the two.  If I cannot do the whole, there may be others,—­and if there are, we shall find them,—­who would help to build the city.”

“I know who,” said Desire, instantly.  “Dakie Thayne, and Ruth!  It is just what they want.”