(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)

June 5. I have not dipped pen in ink for an entire week, which has been one of stirring events, for not only have we wholly emerged from indoor life, but we have had a hair-breadth escape from something that not only threatened to mar the present summer, but to cast so heavy a shadow over the garden that no self-respecting flowers could flourish even under the thought of it.  You cannot possibly guess with what we were threatened, but I am running ahead of myself.

The day that we began it—­the vacation—­by stopping the clocks, we overslept until nine o’clock.  When we came downstairs, the house was in a condition of cheerful good order unknown to that hour of the day.

There is such a temperamental difference in this mere setting things to rights.  It can be done so that every chair has a stiffly repellent look, and the conspicuous absence of dust makes one painfully conscious that it has not always been thus, while the fingers inadvertently stray over one’s attire, plucking a shred here and a thread there.  Even flowers can be arranged in a vase so as to look thoroughly and reproachfully uncomfortable, and all the grace and meaning crushed out of them.  But Maria Maxwell has the touch gracious that makes even a plainly furnished room hold out detaining hands as you go through, and the flowers on the greeting table in the hall (yes, Lavinia Cortright taught me that little fancy of yours during her first visit), though much the same as I had been gathering for a week past, wore an air of novelty!

For a moment we stood at the foot of the stairs looking about and getting our bearings, as guests in an unfamiliar place rather than householders.  It flitted through my body that I was hungry, and one of the “must be’s” of the vacation country was that we were to forage for breakfast.  At the same time Bart sauntered unconsciously toward the mail-box under the hat-rack and then, suddenly putting his hands behind him, turned to me with a quizzical expression, saying:  “Letters are forbidden, I know, but how about the paper?  Even the ‘Weekly Tribune’ would be something; you know that sheet was devised for farmers!”

“If this vacation isn’t to be a punishment, but a pleasure, I think we had both better ’have what we want when we want it’!” I replied, for at that moment I spied the Infant out on the porch, and to hug her ladyship was a swiftly accomplished desire.  For some reason she seemed rather astonished at this very usual performance, and putting her hands, boy-fashion, into the pockets of her checked overalls, surveyed herself deliberately, and then looking up at me rather reproachfully remarked, “Tousin Maria says that now you and father are tumpany!”

“And what is company?” I asked, rather anxious to know from what new point we were to be regarded.

“Tumpany is people that comes to stay in the pink room wif trunks, and we play wif them and make them do somfing to amuse ’em all the time hard, and give ’em nicer things than we have to eat, and father shaves too much and tuts him and wears his little dinky coat to dinner.  And by and by when they’ve gone away Ann-stasia says, ‘Glory be!’ and muvver goes to sleep.  But muvver, if you are the tumpany, you can’t go to sleep when you’ve gone away, can you?”