I, too, am rather anxious and eager to see my house--_my_ house, if you please!--I, who have never hitherto possessed any larger residence than a doll's house, whose whole front wall opened at once, giving one an improbably simultaneous view of kitchen-range, best four-poster, and drawing-room chairs.

I have, it is true, seen photographs of my new house, photographs of its east front, of its west front--photographs, in its park, of the great old cedar; in its gardens, of its woody pool--but, to tell you the truth, I want to see _it_.

I have already planned a house-warming, and invited them all to it, a house-warming in which--oh, absurd!--_I_ shall sit at the head of the table, and father and mother only at the sides--_I_ shall tell the people who they are to take in to dinner, and nod my head from the top when dessert is ended.
To-day I am going to write and secure the Brat's company--that is, later in the day--but now it is quite, _quite_ early, even the letters have not come in.

We have all--viz., the boys, the girls, and I--risen (in pursuance of a plan made overnight) preternaturally early, almost as early as I did on my wedding-morning, and are going out to gather mushrooms in the meadow, by the river.

Indignation against the inhabitants of the neighboring town is what has torn us from our morning dreams, the greedy townsfolk, by whom, on every previous occasion, we have found our meadow rifled before we could reach it.