now, on lumbering business. He is Neale Crittenden, a Williams man, who
in his youth had thoughts of exploring the world but who has turned out
head of the 'Crittenden Manufacturing Company,' which is the
high-sounding name of a smallish wood-working business on the other side
of the field next our house. You can see the buildings and probably hear
the saws from your garden. Properly speaking, you know, you don't live
in Ashley but in 'Crittenden's' and your house constitutes one quarter
of all the residences in that settlement. There are yours, and ours, the
mill-buildings, the house where an old cousin of mine lives, and the
Powers' house, although that is so far away, nearly half a mile, that it
is really only a farm-house in the country. _We_, you see, are the
suburb of Ashley."

Marsh laughed out again at this, and she laughed with him, their eyes,
shining with amusement, meeting in a friendly glance.

"The mill is the most important member of Crittenden's, of course. Part
of the mill-building is pre-Revolutionary, and very picturesque. In the
life-time of my husband's uncle, it still ran by water-power with a
beautiful, enormous old mossy water-wheel. But since we took it over,
we've had to put in modern machinery very prosaically and run it on its
waste of slabs, mostly. All sorts of small, unimportant objects are
manufactured there, things you never heard of probably. Backs of
hair-brushes, wooden casters to put under beds and chairs, rollers for
cotton mills. As soon as my husband returns, I'll ask him to take you
through it. That and the old church are the only historic monuments in
town."

She stopped and asked him meditatively, "What else do you suppose I need
to forestall old Mrs. Powers on? My old Cousin Hetty perhaps. She has a