THE HOUSE WITH THE BARN ACROSS THE ROAD
A WARM SUMMER DAY
The tent has two occupants. They are both young fellows, who had on the day previous started from their Boston homes for a vacation trip to the woods. In the city they were clerks,—one in a store, the other in a bank. The chance that brought them to this particular spot for their vacation was this: a school friend of theirs, who was blessed (or perhaps otherwise) with more wealth than they, and who was next year to be a senior in Harvard, had informed them a few weeks previous that his folks were going to the Groveland House for the summer. This, he said, was in the centre of one of the prettiest and most delightful regions of all New England, and he urged his friends, Clayton and Holmes, to by all means go along too. He expatiated on the beauties of the place with such an eloquence (whether natural or acquired at Harvard, I know not) that these two gave up the idea of a trip they had been planning down the coast and turned their thoughts inland.
But when they came to study the hotel circular that Alliston gave them, and noted the cost of board per week, this ardor received a dampener.
“Phew!” said Holmes, “we can’t stand that. I don’t own our bank yet.”
“No, we can’t, that’s a fact,” said Clayton. “I’d want more of a raise in my pay than I expect to get for years before I could afford that sum. The dickens! I thought these country places were cheap always—and here’s a little place we’ve never heard of that charges more than half our big hotels here in Boston.”
AT WORK IN HER OWN STRAWBERRY PATCH