"But I don't really mind them, do you?" Mrs. Blake said. "I've never minded sparrows as much as you're supposed to...." They began strolling on again. "Oh, Paul, did I tell you what Aunt Minnehaha told me? No, I didn't. She only told me yesterday. She says that this house was built on the site of another one, a very grand one that was built more than two hundred years ago. But then about 1830 it was struck by lightning and burned to the ground...."
"Amberside," said Foster, walking beside her.
"Hmm? What did you say, darling?" asked his mother, smoothing down his cowlick as she liked to do.
"Amberside. That was the house's name. The other house's. The one that burned."
"Was it really? How do you know?"
"That's what Eli Scaynes says. He says his grandma told him so, and her grandma told her."
"Amberside ... Amberside...."
"You never told me that, Foster," Portia reproached him.
"You never asked me," Foster replied reasonably. "I knew it a long time. I knew it the first day Eli came to work here. He told me when he was riding me around in his wheelbarrel."
"Amberside," Mrs. Blake repeated thoughtfully, stopping to look at the house again, looking at it with her head on one side and her eyes narrowed.