heads. "You haven't seen our big dam, have you? Everybody that comes to
Redford must see that, or father will want to know the reason why.
'Pennycuick's Folly' some people call it, because he spent so much
money on it; but father is not one to spoil the ship for a pen'orth of
paint. He likes to do things thoroughly. So do I."

And soon they halted on the embankment of a mile-wide sheet of water,
shining like a mirror in a setting of soft-bosomed hills, their dun day
colour changed to a heavenly rose-purple under the poetic evening sky.

"Why, it is a lake," said Guthrie Carey. "You could hold regattas on
it." "We do, now and then, with our little boats. We have three over
there"--pointing with her whip to a white shed on the farther shore.
"And swimming matches. We used sometimes, when we were younger, to come
down on hot nights and be mermaids. Once we moored ourselves out
in the middle, away from the mosquitoes, and slept in the bottom of the
boat, under the stars."

"How charming!"

"It was holiday time, and our parents were away. We took cushions and
things, and it was great fun; but Keziah reported us, and we were never
allowed to do it again."

They sat in the pony-carriage on the dam embankment, gazing silently. A
flock of wildfowl had been scared away by their approach, and now not a
wing, not an eye was near. At a great distance curlews wailed, only to
make the stillness and solitude more exquisite, more profound. The
purple of the hills grew deeper and softer, the lake a mere pulseless
shimmer through the twilight haze. And then, last touch of magic, the