A day or two before this pleasant event, which had set the whole town into a delightful turmoil of expectation and comment, a couple of families quietly moved into the two neat, but by no means sumptuous dwellings, lately built on the little knoll over against the broad end of the park, and facing it. You will remember that the school-house was at one side, the church near by, while the Social house fronted the narrow point, with a street between. Thus the two homes overlooked park and buildings, exactly facing the Social house, though at a distance, while the Works at the other extreme of the village were half hidden by intervening buildings, and soon would be quite overshadowed by the many trees lately set out.
These were the homes which Joyce had built for herself and the Bonnivels. Both of them, though fitted with many conveniences and finished with taste, were of moderate cost, there being not one extravagance, and only the modicum of room actually needed for refined living, in either. Many a rich woman has thought nothing of putting more expense into the fitting of one room, even, than Joyce had laid out on her whole house. Indeed that reserved for Madame was much the costlier of the two. Yet, with the pretty outlook across the green triangle before the doors, the high situation, the soft roll of the lawns surrounding them, and the majesty of the one immense maple which stood between the buildings, and had grown for a quarter of a century in lordly majesty, appropriating to itself all the juices of the soil for yards around, until it was the famed landmark of that region, these places were more attractive than many more palatial which fairly daunt the stranger with their cold magnificence. These smiled in one's face with a hospitable welcome.
Moving was not a difficult operation for Joyce, as she had little heavy furniture to take from the hotel; and it had been a labor of love and jollity to run about with Dorette and Camille, selecting and arranging, first submitting everything to Madame's superior and almost faultless judgment. And here the girl's passion for sharing--she liked the word better than giving--often asserted itself. Obstinately declaring that she should be wretched in a home where everything "smelled of its newness," she had coaxed and cajoled her friends until, almost without their realizing it, there had been such a division of the old Bonnivel effects and the new Lavillotte purchases that both houses presented a pretty equal mingling of the ancient and modern. For instance, Joyce begged the small round table with claw legs from their dining-room, to send in its place one of the handsomest large mahogany rounds she could procure. So Ellen's room was neatly furnished with Madame Bonnivel's square heavy set, stately if not graceful, while the latter's bloomed out with pier-glass and satinwood of the daintiest. The Bonnivels' worn cane chairs somehow found places on Joyce's veranda, while a new half-dozen rockers, of quaint and comfortable shape, took their places through the pretty living rooms next door.