"Why not? It's a perfectly good barn."

"David Grayson!"

"Well, it is. It's a better building to-day than many of the people of
this town live in. Why shouldn't Mary Starkweather live in the barn if
she wants to? It's her barn."

"But, _David_--there are her children--and her husband!"

"There always are, when anybody wants to live in a barn."

"I shall not talk with you any more," said Harriet, "until you can be
serious."

I had my punishment, as I richly deserved to have, in the gnawing of
unsatisfied curiosity, which is almost as distressing as a troubled
conscience.

Within the next few days, I remember, I heard the great news buzzing
everywhere I went. We had conjectured that the barn was being refitted
for the family of a caretaker, and it was Mary Starkweather herself, our
sole dependable representative of the Rich, who was moving in! Mary
Starkweather, who had her house in town, and her home in the country,
and her automobiles, and her servants, and her pictures, and her books,
to say nothing of her husband and her children and her children's maid
going to live in her barn! I leave it to you if there was not a valid
reason for our commotion.

It must have been two weeks later that I went to town by the upper hill