hearing the noise, and going to the little tea-room extension where I keep my winter plants, I saw a horde of men rapidly demolishing the shop, under directions of a superintendent, who was absolutely sitting on top of my honeysuckle trellis. After swallowing six times—a trick father once taught me to cure explosive speech—I went down and asked him if he could tell me to what use the lot was to be put. He replied: 'My job is only to clean it up; but the plans call for a twelve-story structure—warehouse, I guess. But you needn't fret; it's to be fireproof.'
"'Fireproof! What do I care?' I cried, gazing around my poor garden—or rather I must have fairly snorted, for he looked down quickly and took in the situation at a glance, gave a whistle and added: 'I see, you'll be planted in; but, marm, that's what's got to happen in a pushing city—it don't stop even for graveyards, but just plants 'em in.'
"My afternoon sun gone. Not for one minute in the day will its light rest on my garden, and finis is already written on it, and I see it an arid mud bank. I wonder if you can realize, you open-air Barbara, with your garden and fields and all space around you, how a city-bred woman, to whom crowds are more vital than nature, still loves her back yard. I had a cockney nature calendar planted in mine, that began with a bunch of snowdrops, ran through hot poppy days, and ended in a glow of chrysanthemums, but all the while I worked among these I felt the breath of civilization about me and the solid pavement under my feet.
"I believe that every woman primarily has concealed in the three rounded corners of her heart, waiting development, love of home, love of children, and love of nature, and my nature love has yet only developed to the size of a back yard.
"Yes, I will come to visit you at Oaklands gladly, though it's a poor compliment under the circumstances. The mother of twins should be gone to; but tremble! you may never get rid of me, for I may supplant Martha Corkle, the miraculous, in spoiling the boys."
* * * * *
"February 1st.
"One more question to answer and this budget of letters will go to the post with at least four stamps on it, for since you have yoked me to a stub pen and begged me not to criss-cross the sheets, my bills for stamps and stationery have increased.
"Sylvia Latham is the daughter of your Bluff people. Her father's name is Sylvester Johns Latham, and he is a Wall Street broker and promoter, with a deal of money, and ability for pulling the wires, but not much liked socially, I should judge—that is, outside of a certain commercial group.
"Mrs. Latham was, at the time of her marriage, a pretty southern girl, Vivian Carhart, with only a face for a fortune. In a way she is a beautiful woman now, has quite a social following, a gift for entertaining, and, I judge, unbounded vanity and ambition.
"Quite recently some apparently valueless western land, belonging to her people, has developed fabulous ore, and they say that she is now more opulent than her husband.
"They were pewholders at St. Jacob's for many years, until three seasons ago, when they moved from a side street near Washington Square to 'Millionaire Row,' on the east side of the Park. There are two children, Sylvia, the younger, and a son, Carhart, a fine-looking blond fellow when I knew him, but who got into some bad scrape the year after he left college—a gambling debt, I think, that his father repudiated, and sent him to try ranch life in the West. There was a good deal of talk at the time, and it was said that the boy fell into bad company at his mother's own card table, and that it has caused a chilliness between Mr. and Mrs. Latham.
"However it may be, Sylvia, who is an unspoiled girl of the frank and intellectual type, tall, and radiant with warm-hearted health, was kept much away at boarding-school for three years, and then went to college for a special two years' course in literature. She had barely returned home when her mother, hearing that I was going abroad, asked me to take Sylvia with me, as she was deficient in languages, which would be a drawback to her social career.
"It seemed a trifle strange to me, as she was then nineteen, an age when most girls of her class are brought out, and had been away for practically five years. But I took her gladly, and she has been a most lovable companion and friend. She called me Aunt, to overcome the formal Miss, and I wish she were my daughter. I'm only wondering if her high, unworldly standpoint, absorbed from wise teachers, and the halo that she has constructed from imagination and desire about her parents during the years of her separation from them, will not embarrass them a little, now that she is at home for good.
"By the way, we met in England last spring a young sub-professor, Horace Bradford, a most unusual young man for nowadays, but of old New England stock. He was one of Sylvia's literature instructors at Rockcliffe College, and he joined our party during the month we spent in the Shakespeare country. It was his first trip, and, I take it, earned by great self-sacrifice; and his scholarly yet boyish enthusiasm added hugely to our enjoyment.
"He spoke constantly of his mother. Do you know her? She lives on the old place, which was a farm of the better class, I take it, his father having been the local judge, tax collector, and general consulting factotum of his county. It is at Pine Ridge Centre, which, if I remember rightly, is not far from your town. I should like you to know him.
"I have only seen Sylvia twice since our return, but she lunches with me to-morrow. You and she should be fast friends, for she is of your ilk; and if this happens, I shall not regret the advent of the Whirlpool Colony in your beloved Oaklands as much as I do now.
"I am really beginning to look forward to my country visit, and am glad to see that some 'advance season' tops are spinning on the pavement in front of the house, and a game of marbles is in progress in my front yard itself, safe from the annoying skirts of passers-by. For you should know, dear Madam Pan, that marbles and tops are the city's first spring sign.
"By the way, I am sure that Horace Bradford and Sylvia are keeping up a literary correspondence. They are perfectly suited to each other for any and every grade of friendship, yet from her family standpoint no one could be more unwelcome. He has no social backing; his mother is a religious little country woman, who doubtless says 'riz' and 'reckon,' and he only has what he can earn by mental effort. But this is neither here nor there, and I'm sure you and I will have an interesting summer croon in spite of your qualms and resentment of the moneyed invasion.—Not another word, Lucy is waiting to take this to the post-box.
"Yours faithfully,
"LAVINIA DORMAN.
"P.S.—Josephus has just come back! Lean, and singed by hot ashes, I judge. I dread the shock to him when he knows about the yard!"
III
MARTIN CORTRIGHT'S LETTERS TO BARBARA AND DOCTOR RICHARD RUSSELL
"December 10, 19—.
"MY DEAR BARBARA:—
"You have often asked me to write you something of myself, my youth, but where shall I begin?
"I sometimes think that I must have been born facing backward, and a fatality has kept me walking in that direction ever since, so wide a space there seems to be to-day between myself and those whose age shows them to be my contemporaries.
"My father, being a man of solid position both in commerce and society, and having a far greater admiration for men of art and letters than would have been tolerated by his wholly commercial Knickerbocker forbears, I, his youngest child and only son, grew up to man's estate among the set of contemporaries that formed his world, men of literary and social parts, whose like I may safely say, for none will contradict, are unknown to the rising generation of New Yorkers; for not only have types changed, but also the circumstances and appreciations under which the development of those types was possible.
"In my nineteenth year events occurred that altered the entire course of my life, for not only did the almost fatal accident and