Meantime, other effects had been milestoning the course of the Fosters’ splendid financial march.  The fictitious brick dwelling had given place to an imaginary granite one with a checker-board mansard roof; in time this one disappeared and gave place to a still grander home—­and so on and so on.  Mansion after mansion, made of air, rose, higher, broader, finer, and each in its turn vanished away; until now in these latter great days, our dreamers were in fancy housed, in a distant region, in a sumptuous vast palace which looked out from a leafy summit upon a noble prospect of vale and river and receding hills steeped in tinted mists —­and all private, all the property of the dreamers; a palace swarming with liveried servants, and populous with guests of fame and power, hailing from all the world’s capitals, foreign and domestic.

This palace was far, far away toward the rising sun, immeasurably remote, astronomically remote, in Newport, Rhode Island, Holy Land of High Society, ineffable Domain of the American Aristocracy.  As a rule they spent a part of every Sabbath—­after morning service —­in this sumptuous home, the rest of it they spent in Europe, or in dawdling around in their private yacht.  Six days of sordid and plodding fact life at home on the ragged edge of Lakeside and straitened means, the seventh in Fairlyand—­such had been their program and their habit.

In their sternly restricted fact life they remained as of old —­plodding, diligent, careful, practical, economical.  They stuck loyally to the little Presbyterian Church, and labored faithfully in its interests and stood by its high and tough doctrines with all their mental and spiritual energies.  But in their dream life they obeyed the invitations of their fancies, whatever they might be, and howsoever the fancies might change.  Aleck’s fancies were not very capricious, and not frequent, but Sally’s scattered a good deal.  Aleck, in her dream life, went over to the Episcopal camp, on account of its large official titles; next she became High-church on account of the candles and shows; and next she naturally changed to Rome, where there were cardinals and more candles.  But these excursions were a nothing to Sally’s.  His dream life was a glowing and continuous and persistent excitement, and he kept every part of it fresh and sparkling by frequent changes, the religious part along with the rest.  He worked his religions hard, and changed them with his shirt.

The liberal spendings of the Fosters upon their fancies began early in their prosperities, and grew in prodigality step by step with their advancing fortunes.  In time they became truly enormous.  Aleck built a university or two per Sunday; also a hospital or two; also a Rowton hotel or so; also a batch of churches; now and then a cathedral; and once, with untimely and ill-chosen playfulness, Sally said, “It was a cold day when she didn’t ship a cargo of missionaries to persuade unreflecting Chinamen to trade off twenty-four carat Confucianism for counterfeit Christianity.”