hole it had made, so the wall was as good as ever.

You see it was nobody's business what shanty or what
tower old Mark Henry or the Fordyce heirs might or might
not put on the vacant corner lot. The Fordyce heirs were
all in nurseries and kindergartens in Geneva, and indeed
would have known nothing of corner lots had they been
living in their palace in Fourteenth Street. As for Mark
Henry, that one great achievement by which he rode up to
Fernando Street was one of the rare victories of his
life, of which ninety-nine hundredths were spent in
counting-houses. Indeed, if he had gone there, all he
would have seen was his ten-foot fence, and he would have
taken pride to himself that he had it built so high.

When the day of the first raising came, and the frame
slipped into the mortises so nicely, as I had
foreordained that it should do, I was so happy that I
could scarcely keep my secret from my mother. Indeed,
that day I did run back to dinner. And when she asked me
what pleased me so, I longed to let her know; but I only
smoothed her cheeks with my hands and kissed her on both
of them, and told her it was because she was so handsome
that I was so pleased. She said she knew I had a secret
from her, and I owned that I had, but she said she would
not try to guess, but would wait for the time for me to
tell her.

And so the summer sped by. Of course I saw my
sweetheart, as I then called my mother, less and