trolley, which Lizzie must take to do the family shopping, was half a
mile back along the dirt road.

Nevertheless, all the family felt that they had taken a distinct step
upward in moving into lake shore property and nobody complained of
distances. Amos began putting in his Sundays in cleaning up the
bramble-grown acres he intended to turn into a garden in the spring.
He could not afford to have it plowed so he spaded it all himself,
during the wonderful bright fall Sabbaths. Nor was this a hardship for
Amos. Only the farm bred can realize the reminiscent joy he took in
wrestling with the sod, which gave up the smell that is more deeply
familiar to man than any other in the range of human experience.

A dairy farmer named Norton, up the road, gave him manure in exchange
for the promise of early vegetables for his table. After his spading
was done in late September, Amos, with his wheelbarrow, followed by the
two children, began his trips between the dairy farm and his garden
patch and he kept these up until the garden was deep with fertilizer.

There never had been a more beautiful autumn than this. There was
enough rain to wet down the soil for the winter, yet the Sundays were
almost always clear. Fields and woods stretched away before the
cottage, crimson and green as the frosts came on. Back of the cottage,
forever gleaming through the scarlet of the autumn oaks, lay the lake,
where duck and teal were beginning to lodge o' nights, in the
rice-fringed nooks along the shore.

Lydia was happier than she had been since her mother's death. She took
the long tramps to and from school, lunch box and school bag slung at
her back, in a sort of ecstasy. She was inherently a child of the