Somewhere in me there still lurks a good little plump public school boy. Despite the obvious drawbacks, this has its perks. For instance, I manage to feel comfortable in a public library, a skill that can only be acquired early. On the other hand, I’m still smarting from the robotic festival of narcissism that currently passes for education. The stuff is in my blood.

So when we passed a lovely stone house for the three hundredth time and my wife finally said, “Let’s see if anyone’s home,” my first thought was, “But they’re strangers.”

A stranger, as everyone knows, is a threat. Those ancients and their “virtue of hospitality” had a deathwish. They could have been killed. In fact, they’re all dead.

Anyhow, my wife prevailed. She had the odd idea that if we want to build a stone house, we’ll learn even more by talking to people that have done it than by scouring the library and the Internet. I should have explained that books and web sites have a distinct advantage over people. They can’t shoot you. Couldn’t we at least e-mail? Oh, wait, viruses. Instant messenger? But we pulled into the driveway.

It was a quaint house. Stone. Did I mention that? No one was home. I breathed a traditional sigh of relief.

Then a car pulled in behind us.

It was a man. An old man. An old man who was not smiling. My heart did a little jig of panic. My wife was outside, so a quick getaway through the lawn wasn’t feasible. What now?

I did the manly thing. I let my wife do a pretty-smile-introduction. It worked. The old nonsmiling man smiled. I reduced my expectations that he would whip out a crossbow. Before I knew it, we had made tentative eye contact, I had said the required three sentences from inside my Pod, and then I was out. Out of my car on the lawn of a stranger.

Something delicate, dainty, and suburban in me died. Somewhere, my teachers grieve.

The old man (who wasn’t really so old, maybe 55 (fifty-five) or so) proceeded to give us a complete tour of his house. It turned out it wasn’t a “stone house”, it was a “normal house with stone walls build around it.” (Sorry for the jargon.) But he had gathered the stones from neighboring fields. He and his family had lain them themselves.

Then his wife came out (having been there the whole time, perhaps quaking at my wife’s assault?) and whisked us inside. The interior would make Better Homes and Gardens proud. It was all wood. Floor, wall, ceiling. Wood. Seasoned and stained.

He had done all the work himself (his wife explained), and they’d only been able to afford four boards a week. I did a rough calculation. Then I trembled. Well, it was lovely now.

We passed an extraordinarily pleasant half hour with these people without even exchanging names. The woman probably could have spent ten times as long, as every object in view had its own story and peculiar pleasure. When we did leave the house, she went to the stone walls and showed us various rocks with unusual shapes—a heart, a loaf, a waffle.

They didn’t grow their own food, live off windmill power, or appear to have a master plan to save the world. But they lived where they lived. They took the time to make it a treasure. Best of all, they gave candy to strangers.