"And where would my privacy be then and the beauty of the place?" asked Arnold, "I love this green island of chestnut trees, and the winding empty valley, just freckled with a few farms. I'd hate to support a village!"
"But you can be a Millionaire!" said Jim.
"I don't want to be a Millionaire," Arnold cheerfully replied.
Jim gazed at him, opening and shutting his mouth in silence.
"You—confounded old—poet!" he burst forth at last.
"I can't help that," said Arnold.
"You'd better ask Miss Sutherland about it, I think," his friend drily suggested.
"To be sure! I had forgotten that—I will," the poet replied.
Then he invited her to come up and visit his Hill, met her at the train with the smooth, swift, noiseless, smell-less electric car, and held her hand in blissful silence as they rolled up the valley road. They wound more slowly up his graded avenue, green-arched by chestnut boughs.
He showed her the bit of meadowy inlet where the mill stood, by the heavy lower fall; the broad bright packing rooms above, where the busy Italian boys and girls chattered gaily as they worked. He showed her the second fall, with his little low-humming electric plant; a bluestone building, vine-covered, lovely, a tiny temple to the flower-god.
"It does our printing," said Arnold, "gives us light, heat and telephones. And runs the cars."