“Because the growing and the crowding and the striving of the city make so much of the money, little wife!  Because to keep everybody fairly comfortable as the world goes along, there could not be so many separate piles laid up; it would have to be used more as it comes, and it could not come so fast.  If nobody cared to be very rich, and all were willing to live simply and help one another, in little ‘horseshoe neighborhoods,’ there wouldn’t be so much that looks like grand achievement in the world perhaps; but I think maybe the very angels might show themselves out of the unseen, and bring the glory of heaven into it!”

Kenneth’s color came, and his eyes glowed, as he spoke these words that burst into eloquence with the intensity of his meaning; and Rosamond’s face was holy-pale, and her look large, as she listened; and they were silent for a minute or so, as the pony, of his own accord, trotted deliberately on.

“But then, the beauty, and the leisure, and all that grows out of them to separate minds, and what the world gets through the refinement of it!  You see the puzzle comes back.  Must we never, in this life, gather round us the utmost that the world is capable of furnishing?  Must we never, out of this big creation, have the piece to ourselves, each one as he would choose?”

“I think the Lord would show us a way out of that,” said Kenneth.  “I think He would make His world turn out right, and all come to good and sufficient use, if we did not put it in a snarl.  Perhaps we can hardly guess what we might grow to all together,—­’the whole body, fitly joined by that which every joint supplieth, increasing and building itself up in love.’  And about the quietness, and the separateness,—­we don’t want to live in that, Rose; we only want it sometimes, to make us fitter to live.  When the disciples began to talk about building tabernacles on the mountain of the vision, Christ led them straight down among the multitude, where there was a devil to be cast out.  It is the same thing in the old story of the creation.  God worked six days, and rested one.”

“Well,” said Rose, drawing a deep breath, “I am glad we have begun at the Horseshoe!  It was a great escape for me, Kenneth.  I am such a worldly girl in my heart.  I should have liked so much to have everything elegant and artistic about me.”

“I think you do.  I think you always will.  Not because of the worldliness in you, though; but the other-worldliness, the sense of real beauty and truth.  And I am glad that we have begun at all!  It was a greater escape for me.  I was in danger of all sorts of hardness and unbelief.  I had begun to despise and hate things, because they did not work rightly just around me.  And then I fell in, just in time, with some real, true people; and then you came, with the ‘little piece of your world,’ and then I came here, and saw what your world was, and how you were making it, Rose!  How a little community of sweet and generous fellowship was crystallizing here among all sorts—­outward sorts—­of people; a little community of the kingdom; and how you and yours had done it.”