Then before she has had time to read it, I am going to sneakily get it back and blot or tear out some of the things I have written.  I can decide later what will be data and what will be dangerous to the cause.

“And you will be glad to have me—­come and live for a time in your home life, dear?” Jane recalled me to the question in hand by saying wistfully.  “I feel that I have never had such good friends before, anywhere, as these of yours are to me, Evelina,” she added.

That’s one time I got Jane completely in my arms and showed her what a really good hugging means south of Mason and Dixon’s line.  From later developments I am glad she had that slight initiation.  It must have been serviceable to her New England disposition.

Then just as I was going to ask some of the plans she—­and Polk—­had made, over came Cousin Jasmine, with Cousin Annie and Mary, with Mrs. Hargrove puffing along behind them.  They had come to see Jane, but I was allowed to stay and have my breath knocked out by their mission.

It seems Jane had got a great big book from some firm in New York that tells alt about herb-growing, and how difficult it is to get the ones needed for condiments and perfumes, and offering to buy first-class lavender and thyme and bergamot and sweet fern and things of that kind in any quantities at a good price.  She had shown it to the little old ladies who had been secretly grieving at the separation from their garden out on their poorly rented farm, and the leaven had worked—­on Mrs. Hargrove also.  They go back to the farm and she with them!  She had decided on raising mint to both dry and ship fresh, because he of the gay pajamas always liked to have it strong and fresh for the julep of his ancestors.  I hope she won’t forget to take that pattern of Japanese extraction with her and make some for the Crag now and then, for it will save my time.  Horrors!

“We have fully decided on our course of action, Jane, and Evelina, dears,” said Cousin Jasmine in a positive little manner that she would have been as incapable of a month ago, as is a pet kitten of barking at the family dog, “but we do so dread to break it to dear James, because we feel that he may think we are not happy under his roof and be distressed.  Do you believe we shall be able to make him see that we must pursue our independent life, though always needing the support of his affection and interest?”

“I believe you will, Cousin Jasmine,” I said, wanting to both laugh and cry to see the Crag’s burdens begin to roll off his shoulders like this.  And the tears that didn’t rise would have been real ones, too, for I found that, down in the corner of my heart, I had adored the picture of my oak with the tender little old vines clinging around him.  It was the producing gourd I had most objected to and I couldn’t see but she would be there until I unclasped her tendrils.

But I was forgetting that, in the modern theory of thought-waves, it is the simplest minds that get the ripples first and hardest.  Sallie came over just as soon as the other delegation had got home to take the twins off her hands.  Jane had gone upstairs to make more calculations on our reconstruction, and I was trying to get a large deep breath.