bling "cottage" which was looming on the top of the next slope. Lucas had had his home painted a brownish-red last summer, with a trim done in a lighter shade of brown which brought out the bold, ungraceful lines of the porch running across the whole front of the house and extending about halfway back on both sides.
The house faced south toward the lake, but it had doors on all sides. An even, uncompromising row of windows—seven to the south, six to the west—looked out under the porch roof; above the porch, the second-floor windows exactly matched the lower rows; and there you could see more plainly that the center three of the front windows were set in "bow." The walls were clapboard; the roof was shingle and with gutters and rainspout in good repair to catch and pipe rain water to a cistern. Fifty yards away, behind the house, was a barn, similarly clapboarded and painted to match the house; and in the earlier days of Ethel's visits there had been a delightful old clapboard windmill. But several years ago it had been torn down, and Lucas had substituted the neat, low, flat-roofed structure which now stood over the deep-driven well and sheltered the gasoline engine which pumped water to the house and generated electricity for light and power.
Every one was well at the house, and everything was going well there, Lucas had assured in reply to Ethel's questions. The persons whom he grouped under "every one" were his wife and "Miss Platt" and "Miss Platt's husband." Long ago, when Lucas still had his office upon Dearborn Street in Chicago, Miss Platt had been his private secretary; she had been about thirty, then,—a large-boned, firmly built, phlegmatic woman with dull, hazel eyes and lusterless,
