I hung up the receiver, and rushed into the dining-room.

"Hurry with luncheon, Aubrey!" I said. "I've rented a place in Clovertown, and we go out to take possession to-day. We leave in forty minutes!"

Aubrey looked up with interest.

"I heard you at the telephone. You are a crazy little cat," he said, but I could see that he was charmed. We love to do crazy things.

"He's going to meet us at the station with a carriage," I explained as I struggled into my coat with Mary's help, and Aubrey pawed madly around in the dark closet for overshoes for both of us.

Mary flew about like a distracted hen until she saw us safely started. Most people would have gone mad at our erratic proceedings, but nothing ever disturbed Mary's equanimity. In fact, crises fairly delighted her. In an emergency she rose to the heights of Napoleon.

Finally we started, caught the train, and arrived. The gallant Mr. Close met us, true to his word, and in five minutes we were on our way to Peach Orchard.

As we drove into the grounds, Mr. Close clapped his hand to his forehead with an exclamation.

"What is it?" I said, with a sinking heart.

"I've forgotten the key!"

"Never mind," I said, blithely. "We can easily get in through a window. My husband used to be a burglar."

It never occurred to me that the poor man would take such an idiotic remark seriously, so we neither of us looked at him until we had examined every door and window to find if haply one had been left unlocked. Nor did we notice that we were doing all the work until Aubrey selected the back hall window as the loosest, and opening his knife—the wickedest looking pocket-knife I ever saw, by the way—he proceeded deftly to turn the lock of the window and then to raise it.

I was so proud of his cleverness that I turned to ensure the admiration of Mr. Close also, but the look I encountered froze the smile on my lips and the words on my tongue, for the good man was viewing both Aubrey and me with the liveliest horror and distrust.

Aubrey turned also at my sudden silence, and the light dawned upon us both in the same instant.

Mr. Close had the grace to look quite sheepish to see us both sit down abruptly on the top step and shriek with laughter. But I am sure, in my own mind, that he dismissed the idea of burglars in favour of lunatics.

But Peach Orchard was well named, for the old house was set down in the very midst of it. Trees were everywhere, and, indeed, they grew so close to the house, and they were so tall, that we could not see the house properly. The short winter afternoon was drawing to a close and it looked for a moment as if we would have to come again, when on a shelf, good Mr. Close, whose business instincts were keener than his sense of humour, found an old lamp with about three inches of oil in it. A feverish search for matches resulted in the discovery that his match-box was empty, and Aubrey's held only one.

Right here, let me ask just one question of all the smokers all over the world. Why is it, that, needing them more than you need anything else on earth,—home or friends or wife or mother or money or position or religion or your hope of heaven,—why is it that you never have any matches?

Aubrey's one, which he had been saving, as he told me afterward, to light a cigarette on the return drive, proved friendly, and the lamp smoked instead. Armed with this rather unsatisfactory torch, we explored, and as we went up and down, in and out of the queer old place, built a hundred years ago (Mr. Close said!), we decided to take it, and most unwisely said so, thereby paying, as usual, the top price for something which we could have got at a bargain if we had waited. But such is the perennial foolishness and precipitancy of the Jardines.

Evidently Mary had humoured our going out to Clovertown that afternoon as one of our mad excursions only, and had not fathomed the possibility of our deciding to live there, for when we came home and gaily announced that we had rented Peach Orchard, Mary's jaw fell and her lip pouted sulkily.

This lasted during dinner. We could both see that she intended us to notice it and question her, and when the coffee had been served and we said she might go, she saw that she must open the ball herself, so she fingered her apron and said:

"Missis, I shall be sorry not to go with you to Clovertown, but of all the towns along the Hudson, that is the one I can't bear to go to!"

"Why, Mary?" I said, for the first time in my life suspecting her of the tricks which we afterward came to know were a part of her.

"Because my oldest sister was killed by the railroad right at the station at Clovertown, and I was the one to take her away!"

For about the ten thousandth time Mary held the trump. I felt crushed. I could fairly picture the scene, and I knew that no one could face such harrowing memories. As I gazed at her and she saw I was touched, tears began to gather in her eyes, brim over and run down her pink cheeks. I felt fairly faint and sick to think of parting with Mary.

Then something told me to probe the matter.

"When was your sister killed, Mary?" I said.

"Just twenty-two years ago come Washington's Birthday, Missis dear," whimpered Mary, with her apron at her eye.

I began to laugh heartlessly.

"And wasn't that the sister you fought with and hated—the one you have told me a dozen times you were glad to know was dead?" I went on.

Mary nodded, rather sheepishly. I saw she was weakening, so I became firm.

"Now, Mary," I said, and it was the first time I ever had spoken sternly to her, "put that apron down, and don't let me hear another word about your not going to Clovertown. Of course you are going! Any grief, no matter what, could be cured in twenty-two years,—let alone a grief which never was a grief. And you did not see her after she was dead—you told me you wouldn't go. And what made you the maddest was having to pay the funeral expenses when she had a husband who could have paid them if he would only work. So now, you can just stop those onion tears," I said, marching haughtily toward the door, followed somewhat sheepishly by the Angel, who longed to turn back and mitigate my sternness.

The longing finally conquered him.

"Besides, Mary," he said, pacifically, turning back at the door, "we couldn't possibly get along without you. You are absolutely necessary to us. Who, I ask you, would do up my white waistcoat and duck trousers if you left?"

Mary beamed at this seductive flattery, and bridled visibly.

"Tell me all about it, Boss dear," she said.

And in so doing she and we both forgot that she had suggested going, and nothing more was ever said about it.

Seldom can I look back, however, and recall an instance when we obtained more feverish and thrilling joy than from those next few days when we mentally improved and furnished Peach Orchard.

With what excitement did we lay rugs and place furniture in our mind's eye! How we appealed frantically to each other to decide whether there were three or four windows in the library, and with what complacency did we discover that, owing to a shrewd forethought of my own in furnishing the smoking and living rooms in our apartment with similar curtains, we now had enough for the great, light, airy sitting-room at Peach Orchard.

Then we took a long breath and fell with fresh avidity into the subject of improvements. Mr. Close was of the opinion that Susan would do nothing—could do nothing rather, as she had a consumptive brother who must live in the Adirondacks, and her resources were few. Therefore, we recklessly decided that if she would give us an option on the place for another year, we would make the improvements ourselves. Fools!

Yet why fools! Never have we so enjoyed spending money, and as Anthony Hope says that "economy is going without something you want, for fear that sometime you'll want something which probably you won't want," we felt upheld and strengthened in the knowledge that we were never, by any means, economical.

But the Angel was prospering. Those who frankly predicted that we would starve or be divorced were now glad to sit at our well-set table and smoke the Angel's good cigars and sip his excellent wines. And feeling that we might branch out a little, we promptly branched out a great deal, and nearly went to smash in consequence.

But God watches over children and fools, and we were saved, and sped upon our way in a manner so like a special dispensation of Providence that no lesson was learned to teach us to be more careful next time. In fact, it encouraged us in our recklessness, for in our darkest hour the Angel's first play was accepted, and, being staged, was so instantaneously a success that he gave up novels altogether and began to devote himself to the drama. He devoted to it, I mean to say, all the time he could spare from the improving of Peach Orchard.

Those days, the first of our prosperity and the first of our housekeeping in a real house, were the happiest we had ever known. Susan had been persuaded to let the place for a term of years with an option to buy, so we felt as if we owned it already. But that is a peculiarity of the Jardines.

We tore out the old plumbing, we put in two new bathrooms. We made a laundry out of the storeroom. We cut doors and threw rooms together which never had associated before, and we turned all the windows which gave upon the porches into doors, so that we could step out-of-doors at will. We ordered our porch screened entirely, and planned to furnish it as a study for Aubrey. We put paper-hangers, painters, gas, telephone, and electric men at work all over the house, and made them promise, yea, even swear, to finish their work by a certain time.

But, having, as we thought, learned wisdom by experience, we put no faith in their promises, but engaged Mr. Close in person to go every day to superintend things.

As the day drew near to move we became most agitated as to ways and means. It seemed a gigantic task to crate and barrel everything and move from one town to another, and while we discussed hiring a car, Mary interrupted.

"Excuse me, Boss and Missis dear, for putting in my two cents, but you surely aren't thinking of sending all the furniture by freight, when vans are so much more convenient?"

"Vans?" we cried. "Will vans move us thirty miles?"

"Fifty, if you like," said Mary, promptly.

"From one town to another?"

"From one State to another, and without taking the pins out of the cushions or the sugar out of the bowls."

At once the idea of the sugar-bowls and pincushions fascinated me. I begged Aubrey to investigate, and he agreed with enthusiasm to do it the very next day.

"If I might suggest," said Mary again, "all Boss will have to do is to telephone to two or three different companies to come and estimate the cost. He won't have to run after 'em any farther than the telephone."

We followed her suggestion, and to our delight discovered that all she said was true and more. They agreed to insure against breakage, thieves, and fire; to pack all the stuff in vans one day, take them to their warehouse for the early part of the night, and start at one o'clock for Clovertown,—agreeing to make the whole distance, unload, place the furniture, and unpack the china before leaving that night.

We need not lift a hand. All we had to do was to go to a hotel for one night, and take a train for Clovertown the next morning.

It was almost too easy. I reflected what "moving" meant to people who live in small towns where such conveniences do not exist. Verily, New York might be noisy, but she was a city of superb conveniences. Only Paris excels her in her purveying shops, for in Paris one can buy the wing of a chicken only, and that just around the corner, while in New York one must buy at least the whole fowl (and pay the price of a house and lot in Louisville, let me pause to remark!), but in justice I must also add that such luxuries are also "just around the corner."

By implicitly following Mary's advice we saw everything safely placed in the vans and move majestically from our door. Then we betook ourselves to the Waldorf, with our "glad rags," as Jimmie had commanded, in our suit-cases, and dined in state, and went to Weber and Fields afterward. Jimmie wanted me to hear Weber persuade Lillian Russell to invest in oil.

Now at that, the Angel and Mrs. Jimmie simply smiled indulgently. While Jimmie and I reeled in our seats and clutched each other's sleeves and shrieked (in as ladylike a manner as we could), while tears poured down our cheeks and our ribs cramped and our breath failed. That is the way Jimmie and I enjoy things. That is also why we can stand it to travel in the same party, and not come home hating each other.

But all the time, even in the midst of the fun, my mind turned lovingly toward the warehouse where our precious furniture reposed, safely packed in those huge red vans.

Jimmie noticed my preoccupation, and said:

"If you could take your mind off coal-scuttles long enough, I would like to ask you what you thought of Prince Henry? Aubrey says you met him last week."

"We did, we met him the same day we bought the ice-box," I answered.

"Ye gods!" growled Jimmie, in deep disgust. "Think of remembering a royal prince by the day you bought the ice-box!"

"What most impressed you, dear?" inquired Mrs. Jimmie, sweetly.

"The price!" I answered, cheerfully. "It was a slightly damaged article, so we got it for less than half the original cost of it. You know I do love a bargain, Mrs. Jimmie."

"I meant the prince, dear," said Mrs. Jimmie.

"However, if she prefers to discuss ice-boxes," said Jimmie, politely, "by all means, let us bring the conversation down to her level. It will not be the first time I have had to do it."

"I don't care!" I said, stoutly. "It was far more interesting than seeing the prince. This, you must remember, was our first ice-box. The other one was built into the apartment, and we didn't own it."

"I do wish Bee could hear you!" jeered Jimmie. "Gee, but you will be a trial to Bee."

"I always have been," I said. "She got mad at me just before I was married about a thing as foolish as anything I ever heard of. I had calls to pay, and I asked Bee to go with me. She said she'd go if I'd get a carriage, so I said I would, and told her to order it. But it seems that all the good ones were engaged for a funeral, and they sent us a one-horse brougham with the driver not in livery. We didn't notice it until we opened the front door. Then Bee sailed in. 'Why are you not in livery?' she demanded. 'I shall certainly report you to Mr. Overman. He ought to be ashamed to send out a driver without a livery!' 'If you please, ma'am,' said the man, 'I'm Mr. Overman, and rather than disappoint you ladies, as all my men are out, I thought I'd drive you myself.' Well, that was too much for even Bee. So she thanked him, and in we got. The first house we went to was that of a haughty society dame of whose opinion Bee stood much in awe. Personally, I thought her an illiterate old bore. She was newly rich, and laid great emphasis upon such things as maids' caps, while tucking her own napkin under her chin at dinner. She followed us to the door in an excess of cordiality which amused me, considering everything, and there, to our horror, we saw poor old Overman half-way under the horse, examining one of its hoofs! Poor Bee! I gave one look at her face and giggled. That was enough. She was so enraged that she wouldn't pay another call. She took me straight home as if I were a bad child, and the next day I paid my calls alone."

"And yet," said Jimmie, musingly, "can you or any of us ever forget the night that Bee did the skirt dance in Tyrol?"

"Dear Bee!" said Mrs. Jimmie, softly. "How charming she is!"

"Yet she wouldn't approve of your going to Clovertown," said Jimmie. "She hates the bucolic. Idyls and pastorals are not in it with our rue de la Paix Bee. I'll bet she will never come to see you at Peach Orchard."

"Let us hope for the best," said Aubrey. "It is dangerous to prophesy."

"We're going to keep a cow, Jimmie!" I said, rapturously.

"Well, don't gurgle about it. You act as if keeping a cow put the stamp of the Four Hundred on you. Did Mary say you might?"

"Mary has given her consent," said Aubrey. "But I'm wondering how that old woman will behave with other servants. Of course she was all right while there was no one else and she was boss of the ranch, but we must have two or three now at Peach Orchard, and she is so jealous, I wonder if she will let us live with her!"

Well might we have wondered. Trouble began the very next day. As we went out on the train I noticed that Mary had on her best dress and hat. She had no bag with her, so I wondered how she meant to "settle" in such clothes. The Angel and I had on our worst.

I comforted myself with the reflection that there would not be very much dirty work to do. This would in reality be a kid-glove moving, for Mr. Close had telephoned the day before that everything was ready for us to move in. I had even sent a cleaning woman for floors and windows.

I had taken the precaution to bring a few silver knives, forks, and spoons in my bag. Then as we got off the train I stopped at a grocery and bought a loaf of bread, a tin of devilled ham, one of sardines, some butter, and a dozen eggs, so we were at least sure of our luncheon.

We jumped out of the carriage almost before it had stopped, and, while Aubrey paid the man, I ran up the steps and into the house.

Such a sight of confusion met my eyes! The old paper was piled in the middle of each floor, and not a new strip on any wall. One ceiling only in the whole house was finished. Not a hardwood floor had been laid. The lumber was piled in the hall. Not a chandelier was up. The ragged wires projected from their various holes in ceilings and walls. Where was my cleaning woman? Where were our workmen? Above all, where was the perfidious Mr. Close?

There was no furnace fire, and the water was not turned on. I ran back and Aubrey shouted for the carriage, just turning out of the grounds, to come back.

"Go to the plumbers!" I said, incoherently, "and to the electric light men, and to the agents, and see where the men are, and bring some brooms and buckets and send me a grocer's boy."

He turned away, breathing vengeance. I felt sorry for Mr. Close.

"And to the telephone company!" I cried, after the departing carriage.

"And to—" but the driver lashed his horses, and I had to give up.

I went back to Mary in her best dress.

"Finished, is it?" she said, sniffing with indignation. "I suppose the agent thought we were flies, and could move in on the ceiling—as that's the only thing I can see about the house that's finished!"

"Wait until Mr. Jardine sees the agent!" I said, ominously. "Then something else will be finished, besides the ceiling."

"I hope he'll kill him!" said Mary, pleasantly.

It was a real pleasure to witness the dismay in Mr. Close's face when Aubrey returned, bringing him, mentally, by the scruff of the neck. I have seen terriers yanked back to look at things they have "worried" in much the same manner that Mr. Close was fetched to Peach Orchard.

"Just look, Mr. Close, if you please," I said, ominously polite. "You telephoned me yesterday and said you had been here personally and seen with your own eyes that everything was finished and the house in perfect readiness for us to move in."

Mr. Close refused to meet my accusing eye. He turned green.

There are more ways than one of calling a man a liar. And some are safer than others.

"Did you really have the smoke test put through the plumbing as you said you did?" I asked.

Mr. Close eagerly produced the bill.

Plumber's bills are conclusive evidence.

"Did you have the range cleaned and the water-back examined?" demanded Aubrey.

Mr. Close swore that he did. Aubrey led him captive around the house and showed him the confusion thereof, Mary grimly following. I think Close preferred Aubrey to me, and me or anybody to Mary, for Mary's very spectacles were bristling with anger. She could see herself, in her best dress, having to clean up that mess so that the furniture could be moved in.

Then Aubrey's men began to arrive. The man with the chandeliers. The carpenters to lay the floors. The man from the water office. My negro cleaning woman and the grocer's boy. Fortunately, the cleaning woman had brought a broom, a mop, and a bucket.

As there were no fires, Aubrey and Mr. Close made one in the furnace; Mary and the grocer's boy—or rather the grocer's boy under Mary's direction—built one in the range, while I set the woman to sweeping one floor for the carpenters to begin on.

Suddenly I heard hurried feet running up the cellar stairs. The water man had turned the water on from the street, and it was gaily pouring into the cellar. Mr. Close is a fat man, but he ran like a jack-rabbit to that water main, and shut it off. Then without daring to face—Mary, he started to town for a plumber.

He had not been gone half an hour when the water-back blew up. Fortunately, no one was in the kitchen at the time, but the cleaning woman turned from black to a dirty gray with fright, and without further ado went home. I can't say that I blamed her. Aubrey was busy putting out the furnace fire and bailing out the cellar, so he did not know of that defection.

However, a culmination of such calamities, instead of smiting me to the earth, aroused every drop of fighting blood in my whole body.

I went out on the porch to think it over, and as I thought I began to laugh. I laughed until Aubrey heard me and thought I was crying. He came hurrying out, with a face full of anxiety, saying, before he saw me:

"Never mind, dear! I know this is hard on you, but—"

"Well, I'll be—!"

Both of those remarks were Aubrey's. He was much relieved, however, to discover that I was not cast down by all these disasters. In fact, our moving partook more of the delights of camping out than orthodox housekeeping, and I soon discovered expedients.

The only fire which did not bid fair to blow our heads off was one in the grate in the hall. On this we boiled water and made tea, and for that first luncheon we satisfied ourselves with sardines and devilled ham sandwiches. But as we were obliged to cook on that grate for six days, I may as well record now that we grew into expert cooks, attempting eggs in all forms, batter-cakes, hoe cakes, fried mush, bacon, ham, chops, toast, and fried potatoes,—in fact, no woman knows how much she can cook on a common little hard coal grate until three hungry people are dependent on it for three meals a day.

We supplemented this by the chafing-dish. Aubrey says that I should say the grate fire supplemented the chafing-dish, for nobody knows what can be done with one—in real, urgent housekeeping, I mean, such as ours, until one has tried. It makes a perfect double boiler, and as for a bain Marie, well, I used to cream potatoes in the top part, and when they were all done but the simmering of the cream to thicken it, I used to put tomatoes in the bottom part to stew, and put the potato part back on the tomatoes for a cover and to keep hot. Did you ever try that?

The kitchen range was discovered to be ruined, the pipes being completely full and solid with rust. It is a miracle that some of us were not killed by the explosion. Mary cheerfully declared her regret that Mr. Close had not been bending over the stove with his lie in his throat when the water-back remonstrated. Mary is quite firm in her ideas of making "the punishment fit the crime—the punishment fit the crime."

But we enjoyed it—that is, Aubrey and I enjoyed it. Mary wanted us to go to an hotel and stay until things were in order, and send the bill to Mr. Close. But even though her suggestion was made at two o'clock in the afternoon and no vans had yet appeared, I was firm in my decision to sleep in Peach Orchard that night.

My courage had in the meantime been buoyed up by the fact that the telephone had been put in, and my friend, the grocer's boy, had brought me reinforcements in the shape of plates, tumblers, pots, pans, brooms, buckets, and supplies, and had further completed my rapture by promising me a kitten.

About three o'clock, I, as lookout, descried the big red vans, each drawn by four horses, at the foot of the hill.

Now Clovertown is not full of hills, rather it consists of hills. It is not quite as bad as Mt. St. Michel, for that is all one, but Clovertown consists of a series of small Mt. St. Michels, equally steep, precipitous, and appalling to climb, also equally lovely and bewitching when once you have climbed.

The moving men seemed to realize their steepness, for they put all eight of the horses to one van and bravely started up the hill. But alas, they were New York horses, and only capable of dodging elevated pillars and of keeping their footing on icy asphalt. They were not used to climbing trees, as we afterward discovered Clovertown horses to be quite capable of doing. So, after straining and pulling and being cruelly urged to a feat beyond their strength, we had our first taste of the neighbourliness of the people on the next estate. Their head man, called familiarly Eddie Bannon, came to our rescue.

"Take all them horses off," he said, "and I'll pull you up the hill with my team of blacks."

We were grateful, but politely incredulous. What! One pair of horses accomplish a feat which eight had been unable to do.

I grew feverishly excited in watching the exchange. It was a picture to see the incredulity on the countenances of the van men. They tried not to show it, for that would have been impolite, but Eddie Bannon saw it, and grinned at their unbelief.

When the blacks were in the traces, Bannon took the reins. One of the men offered him a long wicked-looking whip, but he spurned it.

"No," he said, "if the blacks won't pull for love, they won't for a beating."

So then he spoke to them. Willing hands started the wheels. The gallant little blacks, looking like a pair of ponies before the huge van, seemed to lie flat on their bellies as they strained forward, digging their sharp little hoofs into the hillside. The van gave an inch—two! A foot! Then urged by their master's voice, and for very pride of home and race and breed, the gallant blacks pulled for dear life, and in a quarter of an hour the van was at our door, and they were switching their tails and stamping their hoofs and shaking their intelligent heads in the pride of victory.

As for Bannon, he stroked and praised them in an ecstasy of self-vindication, and was refusing the van man's offer to buy them at "a hundred dollars apiece more than they cost."

Those horses pulled our three vans up our hill, if you will believe it, and seemed rather to enjoy the grind they had on the other horses, so that, in a fever of appreciation, I had to go and feed apples and sugar to all ten of them, and to remind the blacks that the New York horses had been pulling those vans since midnight, all of which I begged them to take into consideration, while not in the least depreciating their own glorious achievement.

The initiated need not be told how, when hardwood floors are being laid, furniture is moved from room to room to accommodate the carpenters, and the uninitiated will not be interested at the recital. It must be experienced to be appreciated.

We lived through it. We learned not to object when the ice-box was set up in the hall so near the grate that the drip-pan had to be emptied every hour, and the iceman had to come twice a day. We learned to step over rolls of rugs and to bark our shins on rocking-chairs and to trip over hidden objects with only a pleasant smile.

We screened one porch entirely, and furnished it as a study for Aubrey. We had now papered and painted the house from top to bottom. We had put in gas, telephone, and electric light, and when we could no longer think of any further way to spend money, we turned our attention to the garden.

I longed for old Amos, my uncle's gardener and coachman in Louisville. His experience would be invaluable, and as the estate had been divided and no one had any use for the old grizzled negro, they let me have him. I adored Amos. It was he who had attended to all my childish pleasures on the plantation when I went there to visit, and, in turn, he thought "Miss Faith honey" could do no wrong. It is a comfort to have some one in one's childish memory who thinks one can do no wrong, even if it is only a servant.

So old Amos came and made flower-beds, and persuaded us to buy a pair of horses in addition to the one we had hitherto modestly used, and thus, with the aid of friends' and judicious servants' advice, we were by way of being landed proprietors, and came to look upon Peach Orchard as an estate.

Then the grocer's boy gave me the promised kitten, a common tiger kitten, which we named Mitnick, and soon afterward we acquired not only one cow, but several, our especial pride being an imported Guernsey, which figures quite prominently in my narrative further on. And as Aubrey's unwonted prosperity continued, we endeavoured not to let our riches increase too fast, by spending every cent upon which we could lay our hands on the place. But who, who owns a country place, can help it? Or who would help it if he could?

We raised our own flowers and vegetables regardless of expense. We could have ordered American Beauties from New York every day for what our hollyhocks and clove pinks and common annuals cost us. We planted five bushels of potatoes and dug three and a half, which made them come to a dollar a bushel more than if we had bought them at the grocer's. And as to our milk and cream—I once heard the Angel say to Jimmie when they came out for a visit:

"Which will you have, old man? A glass of champagne or a glass of milk? They both cost the same!"

But what of it? Weren't they our cows which gave the milk? And weren't they our potatoes which rotted in the ground, and our chickens which died before we could kill them? It was the pride of ownership which ate into our lives and made us quite sickening to our friends whose tastes ran to pink teas and hotel verandas, while we, poor fools, lived each day nearer to the soil, and loved more dearly the earth which nourished us.



CHAPTER IX

HOW BEE TRIED TO MAKE US SMART

Bee had spent nearly all the time since we were married in Europe, and had never, therefore, paid the Angel and me a visit. But this very afternoon she was to arrive.

The arrival of one's sister need not necessarily mean anything as alarming as a smallpox scare, but if you knew the somewhat revolutionary methods, adopted with a ladylike quiet and a well-bred calm, which characterize Bee's visits to her relatives, you would excuse our somewhat flurried preparations to entertain her. In addition to our natural desire to do our best for her, Bee had sent a letter clearly setting forth the style of entertainment she expected of us, and indicating that no paltry excuses would be taken for our not coming up to her wishes.

Aubrey was at first for open rebellion.

"If she will take us as she finds us, Bee will be welcome to come and stay as long as she likes," he said, while her letter was still fresh in our minds.

"She won't," I said, with conviction. Bee is my sister, or to speak more accurately, I am Bee's sister. "She will come prepared to make radical changes in our mode of living, in everything from our religion to the way we have hung the pictures."

Aubrey used one small unprintable word.

"Furthermore," I added, "she will be so smooth and plausible about it, that you will not object to carrying out her wishes."

The Angel gave me a look.

"If we carry out her wishes, do you think that will be the reason?" he asked, quietly.

"No," I cried, impulsively. "It will be because as a host or as anything else you are an Angel."

But he is also a diplomat, as his next remark will show.

"As we are incapable with such generic instructions," he said, tapping Bee's letter with his pipe, "of knowing just how we must make ourselves over to suit her, and as Bee is never quite happy unless she is managing other people's affairs, suppose we wait until she comes and gives us specific orders?"

This was what I considered the height, climax, and acme of hospitality.

"Only," he warned me as we drove to the station to meet her, "try to remain, within bounds. The only thing I ha—criticize about Bee is that she makes such a coward of you. Remember when she tries to browbeat you, that I consider your taste and common sense better than hers, and that in any stand you take I am back of you, no matter what it is."

I pressed the Angel's hand gratefully. Bee's train was appallingly near, and my blissful married independence was rapidly degenerating into my former state of jelly-like sisterly dependence.

Bee is one of those persons who, consciously or unconsciously, make you feel the moment you meet her the difference between your clothes and hers. I had almost forgotten this, but the second she stepped from the train I was invisibly informed of the distance between us. I had put on my best, and Aubrey said I looked very well, but in Bee's first sweeping glance at me I felt sure that my dress was wrong in the back.

The carriage drove up, and, as Bee stepped into it, I noticed, that the horses were too fat, and that, while old Uncle Amos might be a comfort, he certainly was not stylish. I never had thought of these things before.

In other words, Bee brought the city into too close juxtaposition for the country to enjoy without a Mark-Tapley effort to come out strong under trying circumstances.

Our place, Peach Orchard, was old, rambling, and picturesque. But it was also comfortable. Both the Angel and I hate the idea of pioneering or of doing without city comforts. So we had put bathrooms in here and electric lights there, and, by adding city improvements to a country estate, we had made of Peach Orchard a dear old place. It was a place, too, over which some people raved, so I was loth to view it through my critical sister's eyes for fear of permanent disenchantment.

But at first Bee was very polite. She affected an interest in the cows and the number of hens sitting and how many more chickens we got than the people whose estate adjoins. She spoke of the butter, which so filled me with enthusiasm that I sent down to the dairy and had Mary bring up Katie's last churning to show her. I was so interested in the colour of the golden rolls in their cheese-cloth coverings that I did not notice Bee's expression until afterward.

At five Bee asked for tea. There were some hurried whispered instructions before we got it. But we pulled through that all right.

Then Bee said:

"Who is coming out to-night?"

"Coming out where?" I asked, genially.

"Why, to dine. Surely, you don't dine here alone, just you two, every evening?"

I looked at Aubrey, and he looked at me.

"To be sure we do! Do you think we are already so bored by each other that we send to New York for people to amuse us?" I cried, with some spirit.

"Oh, not at all!" answered Bee, politely. "Only, I thought perhaps, now that I am here, you would have some one from town for me to talk to."

"Why, I'll talk to you and so will Aubrey—"

I stopped in confusion. Again it was something in Bee's expression, I felt the same way when I called her attention to the length of the sorrels' tails. It reminded me that Bee preferred them docked.

"It is your first night with us, so nobody will be here to-night," I said, rising to the emergency. "But to-morrow we'll have somebody. I'll ask the Jimmies!"

"Or perhaps you could get Captain Featherstone from Fort Hamilton," suggested Bee.

"That is not likely," I said. "He has so many engagements."

"You might try him—by telephone," suggested Bee again.

"Certainly, I'll ask him," I said, cordially.

Aubrey pressed my handkerchief into my hand with a meaning twinkle in his eyes, and when Bee went in to dress, he said:

"It will be rather nice to see old Featherstone again, don't you think?"

"Yes, if we can get him," I answered.

"You poor little goose," said Aubrey, "don't you know they have it all arranged, and that Featherstone won't go beyond earshot of the telephone until he receives your invitation?"

To be sure! I had forgotten Bee's methods.

Of course it turned out as Aubrey predicted—it always does. Captain Featherstone accepted with suspicious alacrity.

For three days Bee was polite, and I, who am most easily gulled for a person who looks as intelligent as I do, was pluming myself upon the fact that our modest mode of living was proving agreeable to Bee's jaded European palate. I wondered if she had noticed my housekeeping. She had not expressed herself in any way, but I wondered if she had observed how scrupulously neat everything was, that there was no lint on the floors and what bully things we had to eat.

I was the more eager to know what she thought from the fact that most of my friends had not hesitated to say that I couldn't keep house, and the Angel would starve. And once when I wrote home for a recipe for tomato soup and one of the girls heard of it, she actually sent me this insulting telegram: "Tomato soup! You! O Lord!"

Which just shows you.

So, on the third day, on seeing Bee cast a critical look around, I said, unable to wait another minute for the praises I was sure would come:

"Well, what do you think of us anyway?"

Then I leaned back with the thought in my mind, "Now here is where, as Jimmie would say, I get a bunch of hot air."

Bee wheeled around on me eagerly, and I smiled in anticipation.

"Do you really want to know?"

"Of course I do!" I cried, impatiently.

"You asked me, you know," she said, warningly.

"I know I did. Go ahead. Tell me."

"Tell you what I think of you?" said Bee, looking me over as if to find a sensitive spot for her blow to fall on. "Well, I think that you are the most hopelessly bourgeoise mortal I ever knew."

I sat up.

"Bourgeois!" I exploded.

"From a woman with social possibilities," she went on, "you have degenerated into a mere housewife. And you and Aubrey have become positively—"

She paused in order to be more impressive.

"Domestic!" she hissed at last with such vehemence that I bit my tongue. As I put in no defence she went on, gathering momentum as she talked.

"When I heard that you had come to live in one of the smartest towns along the Hudson, where millionaires are as thick as blackberries, I said to myself: 'Now they will rise to the occasion.' But have you? No! I come, fresh from those gorgeous house-parties in England, to find you and Aubrey no better than farmers and—satisfied with yourselves! If you could only get my point of view and see how satisfied you are!"

"We are happy,—that's what it is!" I interpolated, feebly.

"Then be miserable, but progress!" cried Bee. "Such a state of social stagnation as you exist in is a sin against yours and Aubrey's talents."

I was so stunned I forgot to bow at this unexpected compliment.

"Here you are in the midst of smart traps, servants in livery, horses with docked tails and magnificent harnesses, perfectly contented with fat, lazy horses, an old negro coachman in a green coat, and carriages whose simplicity is simply disgusting. There is only one really magnificent thing about Peach Orchard, and that is the dog."

I felt faint. To have earned the right to live in Bee's eyes only by a dog's breadth! It was mortifying.

"I don't care so much for myself," pursued Bee, comfortably, "but what Sir Wemyss and Lady Lombard will say, I don't know."

"Why, they aren't coming here, are they?" I gasped, sitting up.

"They are, if you will invite them. Of course I have nowhere to entertain them, in return for all they did for me, and I thought possibly you would ask them here for a fortnight, but since I have seen how you live—unless, perhaps, you would be willing to be smartened up a bit?"

Bee looked distinctly hopeful.

"What would you suggest?" I asked, huskily.

Bee cleared her throat in a pleased way.

"First of all, let me be assured that I will not be embarrassing you," she said, politely. "You can afford to—to branch out a little?"

"Yes," I said. But my pleasure in the admission was not keen.

"Then," said Bee, "I would advise a coachman and a footman in livery. I know just where two excellent Englishmen can be got. Then you want all this made into lawns. You want to exercise the horses more, and have their tails docked. And above all you want a victoria."

"We have got that," I said. "I was going to surprise you with it. It came this morning."

"Where is it?" cried Bee, standing up and shaking out her gown.

"In the barn, but perhaps—"

"Let's go and look at it!" exclaimed Bee. Then as we started she laid her hand kindly on my arm. "And please say 'stables,' not 'barn.' Sir Wemyss might not know what you meant."

I giggled at this, for ours is so hopelessly a barn. Nobody but a fool would try to rejuvenate the huge red structure by the word "stables." It sheltered the lovely, soft-eyed Jerseys, a score of sitting hens in one retired corner, the horses, the feed, the carriages, and farm implements. Stables indeed!

Bee walked straight by all the animals, who turned their heads and gave me a welcome after their several kinds, and stood in delighted contemplation before the beautiful shining victoria.

"That is a beauty!" she said, at length. "Aubrey certainly knows what's what, even if you don't. Now I can tell you what has been in my mind all day long. Oh, do leave that cow alone and listen! Call the dog!"

Jack, our snow-white bulldog, came at a word. Bee beamed on him.

"It is the latest—the very latest fad in London to drive in a victoria with a white bulldog on the seat with you!" she said, complacently. "And Jack will be simply perfect for the part."

"Shall I train Aubrey to run behind with his tongue hanging out, in Jack's place?" I asked.

"Now there you go—rejecting my simplest suggestion!" cried Bee. "My simplest, my smartest, and my least expensive! This won't cost you a penny, and it will attract attention at once."

I closed my eyes for a moment to contemplate just what sort of attention we would attract if the dog and I drove to the Station to meet Aubrey.

"Suppose we try it now!" suggested Bee. "Will you have Amos bring out the horses?"

Bee is always scrupulously polite about not giving orders to my servants direct, although I have begged her to consider them as her own. I always think that a hostess who neglects to make her guests feel at liberty to give an order either is not accustomed to servants or else stands in too much awe of them.

Jack, the bulldog, assisted in our preparations with much getting under our feet and many hearty tail-waggings. Little he knew what was to follow!

Bee carefully gave me my position at the right, and took her own.

"Now," she said, "there are two equally correct ways of sitting in a victoria, neither of which you are doing."

I was quite comfortable, but I immediately sat up.

"It depends upon what you have on," Bee proceeded. "If you are tailor-made and it is morning, you sit straight like this. If it is afternoon and you are all of a Parisian fluff, you recline like this and put your feet as far out on the cushion as you can. It shows off your instep."

"It comes very near showing off your garter," I said, indignantly. "You needn't expect me to lie down like that and put my feet on the coachman's back. Aubrey would have a fit."

"You are positively low," said Bee, straightening herself. I giggled helplessly at her instructions. They were so beyond my power to carry them out properly.

"Can't I sit like this? Can't I be comfortable? What's a victoria for, anyhow?" I demanded.

"Call the dog!" was Bee's only answer.

I called him. He came to the step, his tongue hanging out, his stumpy tail wagging.

"What'll you have, girls?" he seemed to say.

"Get in here! Come up, Jack!" I coaxed, patting the seat invitingly.

Jack put one paw on the step, and wagged his tail harder. Old Amos's shoulders shook.

"Don' reckon you all will git dat dorg into de kerredge, Miss Faith," he said. "Look lake he smell a trick."

It certainly did look as if he smelled treachery, for nothing could persuade him to enter our chariot. Finally the stable-boy lifted him bodily. Bee seized a paw and I his two ears, and thus protesting we dragged him to a position between us. He was badly frightened by such treatment, but remembering that I had been his friend in times past, his tail fluttered amiably. I gave a hurried order to Amos to drive out quickly, but as the carriage began to move, Jack's big body trembled violently, and he lifted up his voice in a howl of protest which woke the echoes. He tried to jump out, but as both Bee and I had our arms around him, more in anxiety than affection, however, he realized that we desired his society, and forbore to escape. Jack is a good deal of a gentleman, you see, albeit primitive in his methods of showing his discomfort.

"He'll soon stop," said Bee, encouragingly. "He feels strange at first."

But he didn't stop. The more familiar his surroundings became, the more we passed horses and dogs he knew, the keener became his humiliation at driving by in enervating luxury, where once he had trotted pantingly in the dust and heat. His howl changed to a deep bay, and the bay to a long-drawn wailing, which was so full of pain that the passers-by made audible comments. As for me, I was afraid every moment that we would be arrested by a member of the S. P. C. A., but fortunately the populace seemed to think we were on our way to the veterinary surgeon for a dangerous operation.

"Poor fellow!" said one, "you can see he is injured by the way they are holding him!"

"Ain't them ladies kind-hearted now to take that ugly-lookin' old bulldog in that fine carriage to the doctor!" said a factory-girl.

Bee crimsoned.

"Stop laughing!" she said to me in a savage aside. "I wish I could stuff my handkerchief down his throat. Won't he ever stop?"

"It seems not!" I answered, cheerfully. "And we really can't consider that there is any more style to this manner of driving than if we belonged to the hoi polloi who drive with their husbands, and let their dogs follow, can we?"

Bee gave me a look.

"I believe you are pinching him to make him howl," she said.

At that unjust accusation I took my arms away from Jack's neck, and feeling the affectionate embrace of his lawful mistress relax, he violently eluded Bee's, and with a flying leap he was out and away, safely restored to his doggish dignity.

By this time quite a little crowd had collected, and Amos's shoulders were shaking unmistakably. Both these things annoyed Bee. The crowd was pitying her. Amos was laughing at her,—two things which could not fail to vex. She can bear being envied to the verge of being wished a violent death with equanimity, but to be pitied or ridiculed? Haughty Bee! She forgot herself, and gave the order herself to drive fast, and the way we drove back to Peach Orchard gave Jack something to do to keep up with us. We may have lacked the style of our driving out, but Bee said the pace was good for the sorrels. To me it savoured of the pace of fugitives from justice.

This episode, unfortunate as it had proved, would not have dampened Bee's ardour nor discouraged her in the least, had not Jack taken matters into his own paws. He seemed to connect Bee with his day of humiliation, and not only eyed her with deep aversion, but howled painfully whenever she cornered him. And as for the victoria—to this day, whenever it is taken out, Jack with one leap is under the barn by a private entrance which he tunnelled out for himself on that never-to-be-forgotten day when we endeavoured to introduce a London fashion by means of him.

Nevertheless, her other suggestions were carried out. The lovely wild tangle of berry-bushes and long grass was subdued. Our old-fashioned garden was hidden by a row of firs, while Bee set out beds of cannas and geraniums. To me it was simply hideous, but the look of complacency which Bee habitually wore as she thus brought us within the pale of civilization more than repaid me for any artistic losses we may have sustained. Bee was my sister and our guest, and could only be made happy by feeling that her coming had effected changes for the better and by being constantly entertained. What, then, was more simple than to content her with such entertainment as she had requested before she came, and by permitting her to smarten us up? To be sure, Aubrey used to tell me every night that he was going to dig up the bed of cannas and coleus the moment her back was turned, but as I, too, was quite willing to see that done, it seemed to me that I was treading a somewhat dangerous road with great discretion and a tact I never should get the credit for. Bee, I felt sure, regarded me as a fool for not having done all this at the beginning.

At Bee's request we joined the Country Club and the Copsely Golf Club, and I bought more clothes, and the Angel and I found ourselves in a set we never had cared for before, but which was amusing enough for a few weeks or months at most.

But the episode which broke the backbone of Bee's complacency and virtually gave us back our freedom was this:

True to her word, Bee got us an English coachman and a footman, and put them into a very smart and highly expensive livery. But the coachman only lasted a week, having too eagerly imbibed of the flowing bowl and being discovered by the Angel asleep in his new livery with his head sweetly pillowed on the recumbent body of the gentlest cow. This mortified Bee, for the men were, in a sense, her property, so she dismissed him, had his livery cleaned, and resolutely set herself to the somewhat difficult task of securing a coachman to fit the livery. I could, in this, give her no assistance, or, to speak more accurately, she would permit none, and finally she announced, with an air of triumph which plainly called for congratulations, that she had secured what she wanted.

The first time I saw my new coachman, there was something irritatingly familiar about him. He seemed to know me very well, too, and called me "Mis' Jardine" with a nod of the head as if we had formerly been pals. But under Bee's tutelage I was on terms of distant civility with my menials instead of knowing all their joys and sorrows as in the past.

But Bee was charmed with the tout ensemble. She said he matched the footman better than the Englishman did, because the Englishman was Irish anyway.

So that first afternoon Bee arranged to go to the Copsely Golf Club just at the close of the tournament, and to drive up when the porches would be filled with the players and their friends having tea. Bee likes to make a dramatic entrance, and often relates in tones of positive awe how she once saw a Frenchwoman in an opera-cloak composed entirely of white tulle run the whole length of the Grand Opera House in Paris in order to make the tulle, which was cut to resemble wings, float out diaphanously behind her.

So as we bowled smartly along, the sorrels having been reduced by hard driving until they were models of symmetry, the new victoria shining, our new liveries glittering in the eyes of the populace, and we ourselves ragged out, as Aubrey said, as if our motto had been, "Damn the expense," we certainly felt complacent.

"Now watch him pull the sorrels up," whispered Bee. "I taught him myself."

With that we arrived almost at a fire-engine pace in front of the club-house steps, and the carriage stopped. But to our horror, Bee's coachman leaned so far backward to pull up that his body was perfectly horizontal, and—yes—I was sure of it, he braced his foot against the dashboard to get a leverage. I have seen grocery-boys pull up and turn sidewise on their seats in exactly the same manner.

Bee's face was purple.

The sorrels, unaccustomed to such a jerk of their bits, instantly began to back, and two men rushed down the steps to our assistance. But Jehu was equal to the occasion. He slapped the horses' backs with the reins, and joyously drove our two off wheels up on to the lowest step of the club-house porch.

In that attitude we paused, and I got out. Bee, after an instant's hesitation, gracefully followed suit. Nor could you tell from her placid face that this was not always the way we made our approach.

As for me, I was in a spasm of laughter which Jehu saw.

"I'm sorry, Mis' Jardine," he said, as the gentlemen released the sorrels' heads, and he prepared to drive off the steps, "but these horses pulls more than Guffin's mare, and I can't get a purchase on 'em with this bad hand of mine."

Then I knew who he was! He drove Guffin's grocery wagon for two months, and had lost three fingers of his right hand!

Poor Bee! But she took it out on me on the way home for not having had presentable servants before she came.

Now that she has gone, Amos is driving the sorrels again, and they are getting fat.



CHAPTER X

OUR FIRST HOUSE-PARTY

It was Bee who suggested giving one, but then Bee thought up so many things for us to do while she was staying with us!

She invited her friends, Sir Wemyss and Lady Lombard, to spend a week at Peach Orchard, and when they accepted she said, to soothe my fright at being asked to entertain such grand personages, that if I would invite other people and make a house-party, it would take much of the responsibility off my shoulders, as then the guests would entertain each other.

Then she mentioned Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie, Artie Beguelin and his wife, Cary Farquhar, and Captain Featherstone, which would make ten of us in all.

To those who did not know Jimmie, this would seem a small number for a house-party, but Jimmie in a house all by himself would seem to fill it to overflowing with people, but they would all be Jimmie.

As I knew how much solid satisfaction it would be to Mrs. Jimmie to be for a whole week in the same house with so famous a beauty as Lady Lombard, I acted on Bee's suggestion, and all my people said they would come.

Bee came gracefully down-stairs one morning before our guests came. She held a letter in her hand.

"Coffee, Bee?" I asked.

"No, thank you. I had mine in bed."

She wrinkled her brow in perplexity.

"I don't know what to do about it," she murmured.

"About what?"

"Billy. He wants to see me so much, mother writes. She thinks I ought to come home immediately."

"Let's see," I said. "It's only eight months since you saw your child. Isn't mother rather absurd?"

Bee lifted her eyes.

"Don't be nasty," she said. "You learned that tone from Aubrey."

Aubrey smiled pleasantly at our guest.

"I didn't!" I said, warmly. "I used to be quite nasty at times before I was married."

Bee showed her little white teeth in a smile.

"I'm glad to hear you admit it," she said, sweetly.

"If you would like to see Billy so much," said Aubrey, politely, "why not bring him on here?"

"Could you?" I cried, in delight. To think of having Billy! The lamb had never been in the country in his life, and he was wild over my letters about Peach Orchard.

"I can arrange it, if you like," Aubrey went on—mostly to me, for Billy's mother was silently thinking.

"Do have him, Bee!" I cried. "I won't let him get in your way. He needn't even sleep in your room. I'll have Norah put up a cot in the alcove of the rose room. She can sleep there, and dress him and everything. You won't be annoyed the least bit."

"Well," said Bee, with graceful reluctance, "if you are sure he won't be in your way, and if Aubrey's cousin will bring him, I see no reason why he mightn't come."

I almost squealed in my delight. It would certainly be worth while to see the child's eyes when he first saw the calves and little chickens.

I left both Aubrey and Bee at the table while I rushed up-stairs to see if the rose room would be just right for him. I made Aubrey promise to arrange everything by telegraph. Norah loved children, and entered into my plans with delight. Then I flew out to interview old Amos. He had told me only a few days before that the boys on the estate next ours wanted to sell their goats and goat carriages.

The days passed rapidly in preparations, but of all my guests, titled or otherwise, it was Billy—my Billy—I wanted to see worst. In two days I got a letter.

"Dear Miss Tats," it ran, "I only write to say that I shall be glad to come. If I had not written you a long letter so soon ago, I would write more now. Tell mother to be sure to meet me at the station. Don't let her forget that I shall arrive at four-sixteen. Your affectionate little nephew, Billy."

I wept tears of delight over this effusion, and "so soon ago" passed into the Jardine vocabulary.

In looking back, I think I can safely say that if Bee had known what would happen at that house-party to shock her English friends, she would have preferred to discharge her obligations to them by a nice little Sunday afternoon at Coney Island or an evening in Chinatown. But fortunately the English are a sensible race, and Sir Wemyss and his bride, perhaps because of the reasonable way the duchess came around when she found her daughter bent upon marrying Sir Wemyss, were so good-humoured and so plainly determined to see naught but good in America and naught but fun in Americans that they took everything in good part.

Aubrey, Jimmie, and Sir Wemyss got on capitally from the start, for before they came Aubrey said:

"What shall I say to them at first—when they come aboard of us, and before I have got my sea legs on?"

"Why," said Jimmie, "that's dead easy. Say to Lady Mary, 'Let my wife give you some tea,' and to Sir Wemyss say, 'Old man, how would a whiskey and soda go?' and there you are right off the bat."

Aubrey said precisely these words, with the most satisfactory result, for over her third cup of tea I felt very friendly with the beautiful English woman, and after four whiskies the men were almost sociable.

To our delight, Sir Wemyss was enchanted with Peach Orchard. He visited the uttermost corners of it. He was charmed with the cows, admired their breed, almost raved over Jack, the bulldog, whose pedigree was nearly as long as that of Lady Mary, who was the daughter of a hundred earls. He gave me many hints about my fine poultry, and wrote that first night for a pair of his very finest buff cochins to be sent over from his place in England, which he had just inherited from his uncle. He showed us where the apple-trees needed pruning, and was so interested in my attempts at an old-fashioned garden, which Bee had hidden behind a tall hedge, that he went to fetch Lady Mary to look at it, and they both volunteered to send me some plants and shrubs from England, which they declared I needed to complete it.

Bee's face was a study during those few hours. She had honestly tried to have everything as English as possible for them, and had trained my poor servants almost to death, with instructions as to what they were to do during this week. They were outwardly obedient, but inwardly disrespectful, as I overheard Norah, the housemaid, say to the cook:

"Katie, oh, Katie! We're wor-rkin' for the Four Hundhred now!"

"How do you know we ar-re?" asked Katie.

"The ladies all shtrip fur dinner!"

Jimmie simply shrieked when I told him, but Bee failed to see anything in it but an excellent reason why Norah should be discharged. Poor Bee!

She had given me specific directions about serving the meals, and had made me lay in a supply of jam for breakfast, and had implored me to serve cold meats and joints and things as the English do, and to please her I had promised. But that first night at dinner Lady Mary turned to me and said, with a sweetness and grace not to be reproduced:

"Mrs. Jardine, I have come over here to live among you and to be as little unlike you Americans as possible. I cannot forget that it was the American dollar that made it possible for Wemyss to gain poor dear mamma's consent to our marriage, and I am correspondingly grateful. Now, won't you do me a favour? Won't you please leave off doing anything for us in the English manner, because of your desire to please us, and mayn't I see in your house just how Americans live. Particularly your breakfasts. I have heard that they were so jolly—not a bit like ours, and I am keen to taste your hot breads! Fancy! I never saw any in my life."

I fairly gasped with delight, and as for the maids, I was afraid they were going to kiss Lady Mary. It removed an awful strain.

"Certainly," I beamed. "I will do anything I can for you."

"If she does," declared Jimmie, "there won't be a queer American thing for you to learn after you leave Peach Orchard. You'll have seen 'em all."

"That is what I should like," said Lady Mary, in her deep, beautiful voice. "And Wemyss would, too."

Sir Wemyss, who spoke but seldom, here removed his cigar, for we had gone into the billiard-room after dinner, and said:

"Jardine, you don't know how a little place like this appeals to me. Now our places in England are all so large that they take an army of servants to run them, and the gardening and all that are done by one's men. But here with only yourselves you can do so much. You can feed your own chickens, you can prune your own trees, you can do such a lot yourselves. I should think it would be great fun."

We were much flattered by this view of it, and Mrs. Jimmie and Bee were plainly impressed.

"My sister is very fond of her life here," declared Bee. "I found Peach Orchard a perfect pastoral when I first came."

Jimmie had been smoking thoughtfully, with a frown of perplexity on his brow. Suddenly he spoke.

"I think Sir Wemyss is right," he answered. "Now, why not all of us take a hand at farming, so to speak, while we are here? I never have, but I know I could. Anyhow I mean to try. To-morrow, let's go at it and prune the trees."

"It is not the proper season to prune trees," observed Sir Wemyss. "That should be done in the early spring, before the sap begins to run."

Jimmie looked disappointed.

"Those apple-trees are no good," said the Angel, with tact, "so it couldn't possibly hurt to prune them or cut them down if you want to. They are a perfect eyesore to me the way they are."

To my surprise, both Jimmie and Sir Wemyss looked pleased. It was so palpably the wrong thing to do that I should have supposed as good a husbandman as Sir Wemyss would refuse. But the joy of doing evidently led him to accept the Angel's tactful permission to ruin our apple-trees, if by so doing he could interest our guests.

"The very thing!" said Sir Wemyss, with the nearest approach to enthusiasm I ever had seen in him. "Let's prune the trees by all means."

"How charming!" said Bee. "Isn't it delightful to be your own gardener! You have no idea how domestic my sister is, Lady Mary. She superintends her house quite like an Englishwoman. Did you know that we make all our own butter here at Peach Orchard, Sir Wemyss? And I verily believe that Faith knows every chicken on the place by name. She is really at her best on a farm."

Jimmie's cigar blinked as if he had winked with it. Mrs. Jimmie almost permitted herself a wry face at the idea of turning her one week with the Lombards to such poor account, and at first I feared that this plan would quite spoil her pleasure, to say nothing of Bee's. But if you have noticed, the hostess has very little to do with a modern house-party, except to get her people together. After that, they manage things to suit themselves.

At any rate, it occurred that way at my house-party. I had little to do except to trot uncomplainingly in the rear of the procession, for when once Lady Mary made farming fashionable by her personal interest, Bee, who always out-Herods Herod, became so bucolic that she nearly drove the hens off their nests in order to hatch the eggs personally.

On the second day from the date of his letter, Billy arrived. Bee and I went to meet him. The train did not stop at Clovertown, so we had to drive about ten miles. I shall never forget that child's face as he saw his mother. It twitched with feeling, but he felt himself too great a boy to cry—especially over joy. I cried heartily. I always do! And Billy comforted me in his sweet, babyish fashion that I remembered he used when he was in kilts.

Billy became friends with old Amos that first evening, and that sufficed, for Amos had enriched my own childhood, and I knew that nothing which could amuse or instruct would be omitted.

Billy felt that he and Jimmie, Aubrey, Captain Featherstone, and Sir Wemyss constituted the men of the household. When I asked him why he did not include Mr. Beguelin, he put his hands behind him, spread his short legs apart, and said:

"Well, you see, Miss Tats, Mr. Beguelin has just been married, and bridegrooms don't count."

Things went smoothly enough that first day while my people were becoming acquainted. Then it was Jimmie, dear blessed old, maladroit, hot-tempered Jimmie, always so completely at home in a business deal, and always so pathetically awkward and so confidently bungling in domestic crises, who supplied us with sufficient material for a book on "How Not to Prune Trees Properly."

We all went out to the apple-trees early in the morning. As usual, Sir Wemyss was dressed for the part. Why is it, I wonder, that the British always find themselves dressed for the occasion? I believe, if an Englishman were wrecked in mid-ocean, with only a hat-box for baggage, that out of that box he could produce bathing-trunks in which to drown properly.

The Angel was frankly and simply disreputable, his idea of being properly clad for farm-work being to be ragged wherever possible and faded all over. Jimmie, however, wore his ordinary business clothes, patent leather shoes, and a derby hat. And as events transpired, I was glad of it. I love to think of Jimmie pruning trees in patent leathers and a derby.

Being, as I say, confident, Jimmie, who never had seen a tree pruned, waited for no instructions, but sprang nimbly upon a barrel, and, standing on his tiptoes, reached up and snipped at the lower branches. Sir Wemyss took a ladder and his pruning-knife, and disappeared from view into the thickest part of the tree. But hearing the industry of Jimmie's scissors, he parted the branches and called out:

"I say there, old man! You are cutting off twigs. These are the things which need to go—these suckers. See?"

"Yes, Jimmie," I said, pleasantly. "You are not trimming a hedge, you know. You are—"

Alas, that accidents are always my fault! Jimmie turned to glare at me, and the treacherous barrel-head gave way, letting him down most ungently into its middle, and rasping his shins in the descent in a manner which must have been particularly trying to one of delicate sensibilities.

I sank down suddenly in gasps of unregenerate laughter, for the barrel-head was a tight fit, and as Jimmie endeavoured to climb out, the barrel climbed too, giving him a strange hoop-skirt effect, which went but sadly with the derby hat.

Jimmie grinned sheepishly as the Angel extricated him, and placed a strong board on the barrel for him to stand upon in safety.

Then Jimmie decided to saw a dead limb off, and leave the pruning to Sir Wemyss. So he took the saw and went valiantly to work, but it was tiresome, so he leaned his weight against the limb and industriously sawed his prop off, which sent him flying almost into Lady Mary's lap. He saved himself by his nimbleness, but this time Jimmie was mad—uncompromisingly mad.

He said little, however, but seated himself in the cooling and tranquil vicinity of his Madonna-faced wife, while watching the Angel and Sir Wemyss reduce the refractory tree to symmetry and healthfulness without effort and without disaster.

His failure and particularly Bee's and my ghoulish laughter had nettled him, however, and he was determined to recover himself as well as regain his place in our esteem.

All day he wandered around, seeking a suitable opportunity, all the while watching me craftily to see if I suspected his design. But I gave no sign, which plainly lightened the burden he was carrying.

Lady Mary trained my crimson rambler rose over the dining-room window and cut flowers for all the vases. This was ordinarily my work, and I loved it, but it gave her pleasure, and above all it gave her a home pleasure which she had missed. I asked her if she would train the roses every day while she was with us, taking the work off my hands. She coloured softly as she gladly consented, and went prettily and importantly to work.

Artie Beg, having just come home from a prolonged honeymoon, was frequently obliged to go into town for a few hours' conference with his partner, and Cary, from being one of the most energetic of guests, had developed a tendency to talk of nothing in the world except her husband, and, when no one would listen to her, of sitting apart with her hands folded in her lap and a dreamy look in her eyes as if only her body were present at my house-party. Her mind was plainly in Wall Street.

I may not be believed, but Christianity and the love of God were working in my heart when the next afternoon I asked Jimmie's help in a piece of work which it did not seem possible for him to fail in.

The side porch has a great curving, bulging iron trellis for the honeysuckle, and I keep the vines so thinned out that I can have boxes of flowers growing on the porch railing, which only need what sunlight comes filtering through the honeysuckle. By cutting the blossoms every day I obtain the result I wish, and on this occasion I had cut all I could reach, and I asked Jimmie to cut those which were beyond me.

These boxes at the bottom were only as wide as the porch railing, but flared out on both sides in order to hold more earth, and all were painted green. Now in that particular box, shaded by the honeysuckle, I had, with infinite care, coaxed sun-loving dwarf nasturtiums to grow, because their gorgeous colouring looked so well next to the box which held my ferns.

I had planted the nasturtiums in early spring in the box in the greenhouse, shading the colours from pale yellow at each end to a glorious orange and crimson in the middle. Each plant was perfect of its kind and growing and blooming riotously before I took the box, which was some fourteen feet long, and with my own hands nailed it to the porch railing, and its ends to two pillars.

It never occurred to me that Jimmie would be foolish enough to try to stand on the edge of that box, for of course, while I am no carpenter, I drove my nails to cope with wind-storms, not a great man, who—oh, well! I might have known that Jimmie would do something.

He could have reached all I wanted from the porch, but of course, though I only stepped through the French window to lay my flowers down, in that instant Jimmie had sprung upon that slanting edge of my poor, frail little box, and in that instant the mischief was done. The box tilted and flung Jimmie forward against the curving trellis, which began to creak and groan alarmingly. All my precious nasturtiums were pitched headlong into the flower-beds below, and for once Jimmie shrieked my name in accents of the acutest entreaty.

"Faith!" he shouted, below his breath. "Faith, for God's sake run here and catch me! This damned thing is giving way. Haul me back. Oh, my coat won't save me! Leggo my coat-tails. Put your arms around my waist. Stop laughing! Put—your—arms—around my waist—I say—and haul me back! Brace your feet and pull!"

I did as he desired, bracing my feet and dragging him back to safety by his leather belt.

We were detected, however, by Bee and Captain Featherstone, who came strolling gracefully around the corner of the house just as Jimmie's convulsed clutch loosened from the trellis and set all the vines to dancing and trembling, as if a wind-storm had passed over them.

There was no need of their asking what had happened. The ruin spoke for itself. Captain Featherstone gallantly helped me to pick up and replant my poor nasturtiums, but they had been so bruised and their feelings so wounded by their undignified tumble that they did nothing but sulk all the remainder of the summer, never once blooming out handsomely as they should, although I carefully explained to them just how it happened. They seemed to think that it was my fault, and they never forgave me. Sometimes flowers are as unreasonable as people.

Three days after Billy's arrival, when he had thoroughly mastered all the details of Peach Orchard and knew personally all the cows, the horses, the white bulldog, the cats, the chickens, the little calves, and the reachable branches of every tree on the place, old Amos came in to speak to me.

He stood before me, bowing, with his hat in his hand:

"Well'm, Miss Faith honey, I reckon de time's about ripe foh de goats. Dat boy's investigated every nook an' cornder ob de place, an' ef you tink bes' I'll go after de goats dis afternoon."

"Very well, Amos," I said. "We are all going to Philadelphia to-day to attend the launching of Mr. Beguelin's yacht, and we are going to take Billy. You can bring the goats up while we are away, and tomorrow morning we can give them to him."

"Yas'm," said Amos, bowing. "I'll have 'em hyah when y'all gets back."

I will say nothing of the ceremony of the launching of the yacht, although, from Cary's uplifted face, you would have thought it was the christening of a first-born child. Jimmie says we needn't say anything. We were worse!

Billy was wildly excited over the breaking of the bottle of champagne, and asked a thousand questions about it.

The next morning we all went out to the barn to see him receive his goats. His face fairly beamed when he saw them. He clapped his hands.

"Oh, Uncle Aubrey! Miss Tats! Are they for me?"

Then he flung his arms around his mother's neck—Bee's neck, mind you!—and cried out:

"Oh, mother, I do think I have the kindest relatives in all the world! What other little boys' relatives would think of the kindness of giving them goats?"

"That's right, my boy," said Captain Featherstone, looking with open admiration at Bee's motherly attitude, on her knees beside her boy and his arms around her neck, "always be grateful. It's a rare virtue these days."

Jimmie, however, who always spoils things, winked at Aubrey. But Billy's next remark threw us all into fits of laughter.

"Oh, Uncle Aubrey, can't we have a ceremony of launching the goats, and mayn't I break a bottle of champagne over their horns?"

Jimmie fairly yelled. Billy looked distressed.

"Their horns are very strong!" he urged. "I don't believe it would hurt them one bit. And you might give me one of those little bottles I saw Mr. Jimmie open—you remember the little one you had after the two big ones, don't you, Mr. Jimmie?"

"Oh, yes, Billy," I said. "Mr. Jimmie remembers. (You'd be ashamed not to, wouldn't you, Jimmie?)"

"You think you're funny," growled Jimmie, witheringly, as Sir Wemyss and Captain Featherstone broke out afresh, and even Artie Beg left off looking at Cary long enough to smile at Jimmie's scarlet face and Mrs. Jimmie's anxious one. She moved quietly over to where Jimmie was standing with his hands in his pockets, and slipped her arm through his. She did not know quite what it was all about, but she felt that they were laughing at her Jimmie, and, as usual, she looked reproachfully at me.

Billy's plaintive voice recalled us.

"Yes, dearie," I hastened to say. "You may have a small bottle of champagne—or perhaps Apollinaris water would be better, it sparkles just the same, and if it flew in the goats' eyes it wouldn't make them smart, and the champagne would."

Billy beamingly acquiesced.

"Now I must just think up some good names for them," he said, with an air of importance, "and perhaps I'll have to ask Uncle Aubrey and Mr. Jimmie to help me. It's awful hard to think up suitable names for goats."

"All right, old man," said Aubrey. "Come along. We'll think 'em up now, and have the launching this afternoon, and invite some people to the ceremony."

So he and Billy and Jimmie took leave of us, and strolled away together, Billy with his hands in his trousers' pockets and striving to take just as long steps as they did. He would have given his kingdom for a pipe!

We got up quite a little party, and worked very hard over it. Bee and Captain Featherstone delivered the invitations, and people thought it was a most delicious joke, and came in a mood of the utmost hilarity. At first Billy wanted to break the bottle himself, but upon being told that girls always did it, he invited a bewitching little maid of seven, Kathleen Van Osdel, to christen them, while Billy valiantly sat in the goat-carriage, waiting for Aubrey and Amos to let go of the goats' horns.

The names were kept a profound secret, but Jimmie had a fashion of going purple in the face, and pretending he was only going to sneeze. He walked around among the guests trying to appear unconcerned—which made me watch him closely.

He had appointed himself master of ceremonies. He it was who put the Apollinaris bottle into Kathleen's hands, and held her in his arms while she leaned down and broke the bottle over the horns of the gentler goat.

Then her childish treble shrilled out:

"I christen thee, Roosevelt and Congress!" she cried out.

"Let go!" shouted Billy, standing up in the goat carriage, his cheeks like scarlet flowers.

Amos and Aubrey released their hold, Kathleen screamed with excitement, and away bounded the goats down the driveway, with Sir Wemyss after them on horseback, for fear anything might happen.

But nothing did happen, and in ten minutes back they came to receive congratulations from everybody.

"Are they all right, Billy?" I cried.

"Yes, Miss Tats. Congress is just as gentle as can be when you let him alone. They go splendidly, except when Roosevelt butts. You know he is always butting into Congress and making trouble."

At that I understood, for Jimmie deliberately rolled on the grass.

"I noticed that peculiarity of the goats," he gasped, when he could speak, "but if I had trained that child a month, he couldn't have put it better. It's—it's simply too good to be true!"

Then he went away to explain the joke to Lady Mary.

I think Bee enjoyed the house-party in spite of its gardening flavour, for we entertained quite a little. At another time I gave a musicale, and had people out from town; we were invited about while automobiles snorted and chunked into Peach Orchard at all hours of the day to the everlasting terror of the cats, who streaked by us and flashed up trees in simple lines of long gray fur.

It was strange how the cat family resembled human beings, for it was the young cats, Puffy and Pinkie and Fitz and Corbett, who got used to the automobiles first, and ceased to run at their approach. Youth is ever progressive and adaptable, while poor old Mitnick crouched in the fork of a high pine, and glared with her yellow eyes and waved her great tail in furious revolt at those puffing, snorting monsters which she never could abide anyway,—and she was glad she couldn't.

We had no automobile, but the sorrels were there in the height of their glory and slimness, and we still basked in the refulgence of the coachman and footman of Bee's own selection, so her soul was at peace.

Only one thing happened to mar our pleasure. Jimmie fell ill.

Mrs. Jimmie hunted me up one blistering morning, and said, anxiously:

"Faith, I am very much worried about Jimmie. He is lying down."

"Well, what of it?" I said, with unintentioned brutality. "Does he always sit up that you seem so surprised?"

She looked at me reproachfully.

"He always sits up when he is well," she said, gently.

"Is he ill?" I exclaimed, dropping my gardening shears and hastily wiping my hands on my apron. "Can I do anything for him? Does he need a doctor? I'll go right up."

Mrs. Jimmie coloured all over her soft creamy face. She laid her hand on my arm.

"Don't be offended, will you, dear?" she begged, "but—Jimmie—you know how unreasonable sick men are—"

She paused helplessly.

I waited.

"Well, out with it! What does he want?"

"He said—I didn't realize how difficult it would be to tell you when he said it—but he said—"

Again she stopped.

"I shall evidently have to go and ask him what he wants," I said, moving toward the house.

"No, no, dear! I will tell you! Don't go near him!" pleaded Mrs. Jimmie. "That is just what he doesn't want. He said on no account were you to come near him."

She paused with a gasp. Evidently she expected me to burst into tears.

"The brute!" I remarked, pleasantly. "I hope he is suffering!"

Mrs. Jimmie's beautiful face became instantly grave.

"He is suffering, Faith," she said, quietly.

"Then why won't he see me? Perhaps I could do something. Aubrey always lets me try. Has he a headache?"

"He has a splitting headache, he says, and a high fever, and his collar hurts him."

"His collar hurts him! Then why doesn't he take it off?"

"That's just it. He won't. He says he always wears it and it never hurt him before, and he'll be—well, he says he won't take it off for anybody."

I turned away and bit my lip.

Poor old sick, obstinate Jimmie! In my mind's eye I could just see him lying there with all his hot clothes on and swearing he would not take them off and be made comfortable.

But I could do nothing. He would see none of us. I sent tea and lemonade and ice and hot-water bags and every conceivable remedy to his rooms, but with no effect. Nor would he hear of our calling a doctor.

About four o'clock Mrs. Jimmie left him for a few moments, and this was my chance.

I slipped into the room. He was lying on the couch with his feet in patent leather shoes,—even his coat and waistcoat on, and a high, tight collar which rasped his ears.

He grinned sheepishly when he saw me.

"You told me to keep out, I know, but I never do as I'm told, so I came anyhow."

"I know that," growled Jimmie.

"Your head's as hot as fire," I said. "And those shoes are drawing like a mustard plaster."

"I don't care. I won't take 'em off," said Jimmie, savagely, raising himself on his elbow.

I turned on him.

"You always were a fool, Jimmie," I said. "You don't have to take them off if you don't want to." (He sank back with a groan of pain.) "But I'm going to do it, and if you kick while your foot is in my lap you'll hurt me."

Before he could wink I had pulled off those abominable things, and slipped his narrow silk-stockinged feet into cool slippers. He couldn't restrain a sigh of comfort. I went in the closet to put his shoes on their trees, and brought out a white linen coat.

"Sit up and put this on," I commanded.

"I will not!" he answered, flatly.

I looked around and there stood Mrs. Jimmie. If she had stayed away another ten minutes, I would have got him comfortable. But in spite of our combined efforts he insisted upon lying there as he was.

I went out and telephoned for the doctor, and when he came it pleased Jimmie no end that he didn't say a word about taking off those hot clothes.

"You see," he said to his wife, "that doctor knows his business. He doesn't devil me the way you women do."

Mrs. Jimmie was wise enough to make no reply.

"He said if you would go to sleep for an hour you would feel better," she said. "So put on this thin coat, then I'll close the blinds and go out."

Jimmie looked at her quizzically. Then he slowly sat up and changed his coat without a word.

When he wakened his headache was gone. But he was unable to come down to dinner, and we saw him no more that day.

As he went to bed that night he said:

"I suppose you and Faith chuckled over getting your own way with my shoes and coat. But I want you to tell Faith that I stuck it out on the collar and that I only took it off when I went to bed!"

He was all right the next day, so we were spared the grief of being obliged to bury him in that collar.

So it came to be the last day of the Lombards' stay.

We had all grown exceedingly fond of the dear English people who had come so sweetly into the midst of an American home and adapted themselves to our way of living with such easy grace. No one would have believed, to see Lady Mary in her simple garden hat and cotton gown, that she was a court beauty, over whose hand royalty had often bent in gracious admiration. But it was true.

Nor was she deficient in a sense of humour, for she openly doted on Jimmie, and listened intently for his jokes, with the laudable intention of seeing them before they were explained to her, if she could.

His absurd misadventures, however, came well within her ken, and this last one so tickled her fancy that—I blush to say it, but it is true—our imported Guernsey cow is responsible for Jimmie's invitation to Combe Abbey to visit the Duchess of Strowther, when Lady Mary goes home to her mother next May.

This is how it happened.

We were all out on the tennis-court one afternoon, when our attention was attracted by the strange antics of the Guernsey. She was generally quite shy and would allow no one to whom she was not accustomed to come near her. But on this occasion she lurched up near where we were standing, and crossed her forefeet and leered at us in such a way that we women instinctively moved backward and put the men between us and her.

We all stared at her, and she stared back and switched her long tail and hung her tongue out and rolled from side to side, until Jimmie said:

"I'm blessed if the old girl doesn't look drunk!"

Just then old Amos ambled up, his fat sides shaking.

"Dat's jest what!" he exclaimed. "You sho'ly am a jedge ob jags, Mistah Jimmie, tah be able tah tell 'em in man er beas'! Dat cow's drunk. Dat's what she is. Jest plain drunk an' disorderly. She broke her rope dis mornin' en got at de apples en filled hersif full ob dem. And apples always mek a cow drunk!"