little garden plot for each, and leave the woods behind for a piece
of nature for the general good,--a real Union Park; a place for
children to play in, and grown folks to rest and walk and take tea
in, if they choose; but for nobody to change or meddle with any
further. And these twenty houses to be let to respectable persons of
small means, at rents that will give him seven per cent, for his
whole outlay. Don't you see? Young people, and people like Miss
Waite herself, who don't want _much_ house-room, but who want it
nice and comfortable, and will keep it so, and who _do_ want a
little of God's world-room to grow in, that they can't get in the
crowded town streets, where the land is selling by the foot to be
all built over with human packing-cases, and where they have to pay
as much for being shut up and smothered, as they will out here to
live and breathe. That Mr. Geoffrey is a glorious man, Rosamond! He
is doing just this same thing in the edges of three or four other
towns, buying up the land just before it gets too dear, to save for
people who could not save it for themselves. He is providing for a
class that nobody seems to have thought of,--the nice, narrow-pursed
people, and the young beginners, who get married and take the world
in the old-fashioned way."

He had no idea he had called her "Rosamond," till he saw the color
shining up so in her face verifying the name. Then it flashed out
upon him as he sent his thought back through the last few sentences
that he had spoken.

"I beg your pardon," he said, suddenly. "But I was so full of this
beautiful doing,--and I always think of you so! Is there a sin in
that?"