44 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



of them? Let me tell you: When they face 

 an apparently hopeless state of facts, they 

 don't put on an air of forced resignation and 

 begin to talk in pretty platitudes about keep- 

 ing up a good heart and trusting in Provi- 

 dence. None of that. They start to humming 

 a saucy tune and begin to talk about something 

 else. 



Laura hummed a bar or two of "Rock-a-bye, 

 Baby," and slipped down from her seat. 

 "Come on," she said, "let's gp and have a look 

 at the place where the house will stand." 



If you want to know it, that spot was a hard 

 looker. In the old days, long ago, this had 

 been the site of a big, comfortable farmhouse. 

 Later, as we got into our work of cleaning up, 

 we came upon broken heaps of brick and stone 

 from the ruined walls and chimneys ; but there 

 was nothing of that showing at a hasty glance. 

 For a long, long time this had been a waste 

 place. It was littered with the inevitable stone 

 piles, grown up in a wilderness so dense that a 

 cottontail could hardly have worried through 

 it. Do you remember the Kipling story of 

 "Letting in the Jungle"? That's what had 

 happened on this hillock. Wild growths in- 

 numerable blackberry canes and hawthorn, 



