“‘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.