“It was there you lived with your father, was it not?”

“Yes, and my church is to be called the Dr. Amhurst Memorial Church.”

“And do you propose to live at Haverstock?”

“I was thinking of that.”

“Wouldn’t it be just a little dull?”

“Yes, I suppose it is, but it seems to me a suitable place where two young women may meditate on what they are going to do with their lives.”

“Yes, that’s an important question for the two.  I say, Dorothy, let’s take the other side of the river, and enter Vassar College.  Then we should at least have some fun, and there would be some reasonably well-educated people to speak to.”

“Oh, you wish to use your lately acquired scientific knowledge in order to pass the examinations; but, you see, I have had no tutor to school me in the mysteries of lime-burning and the mixing of cement.  Now, you have scorned my side of the river, and I have objected to your side of the river.  That is the bad beginning which, let us hope, makes the good ending.  Who is to arbitrate on our dispute?”

“Why, we’ll split the difference, of course.”

“How can we do that?  Live in a house-boat on the river like Frank Stockton’s ’Budder Grange’?”

“No, settle in the city of New York, which is practically an island in the Hudson.”

“Would you like to live in New York?”

“Wouldn’t I!  Imagine any one, having the chance, living anywhere else!”

“In a hotel, I suppose—­ the Holldorf for choice.”

“Yes, we could live in a hotel until we found the ideal flat, high up in a nice apartment house, with a view like that from the top of Mount Washington, or from the top of the Washington Monument.”

“But you forget I made one proviso in the beginning, and that is that I am going to build a church, and the church is to be situated, not in the city of New York, but in the village of Haverstock.”

“New York is just the place from which to construct such an edifice.  Haverstock will be somewhere near the West Shore Railway.  Very well.  We can take a trip up there once a week or oftener, if you like, and see how the work is progressing, then the people of Haverstock will respect us.  As we drive from the station they’ll say: 

“’There’s the two young ladies from New York who are building the church.’  But if we settle down amongst them they’ll think we’re only ordinary villagers instead of the distinguished persons we are.  Or, while our flat is being made ready we could live at one of the big hotels in the Catskills, and come down as often as we like on the inclined railway.  Indeed, until the weather gets colder, the Catskills is the place.

  ’And lo, the Catskills print the distant sky,
       And o’er their airy tops the faint clouds driven,
   So softly blending that the cheated eye
       Forgets or which is earth, or which is heaven.’”