I wouldn’t give up the fairies that I once knew and peopled the solemn woods with down in grandfather’s Virginia home for a fortune, and even now, any day, I can put my ear to the earth, like Tommy-Anne, and hear the grass grow.  It occurred to me yesterday that the Infant, in age, temperament, and heredity, is suited to be a companion for your Richard.  Could you not bring him down with you before the summer is over?  Though, as the unlike sometimes agree best, Ian and she might be more compatible, so bring them both and we will turn the trio loose in the meadows of Opal Farm with a mite of a Shetland pony that The Man from Everywhere has recently bestowed upon the Infant—­crazy, extravagant man!  What we shall do with it in winter I do not know, as we cannot yet run into the expense of keeping such live stock.  But why bother? it is only midsummer now, grazing is plentiful and seems to suit the needs of this spunky little beast, and the Infant riding him “across country,” as Bart calls her wanderings about Opal Farm, is a spectacle too pretty to be denied us.  Yes, I know I’m silly, and that you have the twins to rhapsodize about, but girls are so much more picturesque in the clothes!  What! thought she wore gingham bloomers!  Yes, but not all the time, for Maria will frill her up and run her with ribbons of afternoons!

* * * * *

Back to the house and garden!  I’m wandering, but then I’m Lady Lazy this summer, as The Man from Everywhere calls me, and naturally a bit inconsequent!  As I said, Bart is at the office daily, and will be for another week, but Lady Lazy has not returned to what Maria Maxwell calls “The Tyranny of the Three M’s,”—­the mending basket, the market book, and the money-box!  I was willing, quite willing; in fact it is only fair that Maria should have her time of irresponsibility, for I know that she has half a dozen invitations to go to pleasant places and meet people, one being from Lavinia Cortright to visit her shore cottage.  I’m always hoping that Maria may meet the “right man” some summer day, but that she surely will never do if she stays here.

“I’ve everything systematized, and it’s easier for me to go on than drop the needles for a fortnight or so and then find, on coming back, that you have been knitting a mitten when I had started the frame of a sock,” Maria said, laughing; “make flower hay while the crop is to be had for the gathering, my lady!  Another year you may not have such free hands!”

Then my protests grew weaker and weaker, for the establishment had thriven marvellously well without my daily interference.  The jam closet shows rows of everything that might be made of strawberries, cherries, currants, and raspberries, and it suddenly struck me that possibly if domestic machinery is set going on a consistent basis, whether it is not a mistake to do too much oiling and tightening of a screw here and there, unless distinct symptoms of a halt render it absolutely necessary.