"All right. You hain't ever rode behind that mare yet, Pert, and I want you should see me let her out once. They say the snow's all packed down already, and the going is A 1." 

 At four o'clock in the afternoon, with a cold, red winter sunset before them, the Colonel and his wife were driving slowly down Beacon Street in the light, high-seated cutter, where, as he said, they were a pretty tight fit. He was holding the mare in till the time came to speed her, and the mare was springily jolting over the snow, looking intelligently from side to side, and cocking this ear and that, while from her nostrils, her head tossing easily, she blew quick, irregular whiffs of steam. 

 "Gay, ain't she?" proudly suggested the Colonel. 

 "She IS gay," assented his wife. 

 They met swiftly dashing sleighs, and let them pass on either hand, down the beautiful avenue narrowing with an admirably even sky-line in the perspective. They were not in a hurry. The mare jounced easily along, and they talked of the different houses on either side of the way. They had a crude taste in architecture, and they admired the worst. There were women's faces at many of the handsome windows, and once in a while a young man on the pavement caught his hat suddenly from his head, and bowed in response to some salutation from within. 

 "I don't think our girls would look very bad behind one of those big panes," said the Colonel. 

 "No," said his wife dreamily. 

 "Where's the YOUNG man? Did he come with them?" 

 "No; he was to spend the winter with a friend of his that has a ranch in Texas. I guess he's got to do something." 

 "Yes; gentlemaning as a profession has got to play out in a generation or two." 

 Neither of them spoke of the lot, though Lapham knew perfectly well what his wife had come with him for, and she was aware that he knew it. The time came when he brought the mare down to a walk, and then slowed up almost to a stop, while they both turned their heads to the right and looked at the vacant lot, through which showed the frozen stretch of the Back Bay, a section of the Long Bridge, and the roofs and smoke-stacks of Charlestown. 

 "Yes, it's sightly," said Mrs. Lapham, lifting her hand from the reins, on 

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