on romance two days out of seven.  At the far end of the garden is a screen designed to hide the peculiarites of the garage.  The central panel is concrete with a window with green balusters; below is a wall fountain.  The window suggests a half-hidden senorita.  It really conceals a high-school boy who is driving the motor for me in J——­’s absence, but that is immaterial.  The fountain is set with sapphire-blue tiles and the water trickles from the mouth of the most amiable lion I ever saw.  He was carved from Boise stone by one “Luigi” from a sketch by our architect friend.  He has Albrecht Duerer curls—­the lion I mean—­four on a side that look like sticks of peppermint candy and we call him “Boysey.”

The pool below him is a wonderful place for boat sailing.  It fairly bristles with the masts of schooners and yachts, and the guns of torpedo destroyers, and while the architect and the grown-ups did not have a naval base in mind when the sketch was made, I do appreciate the feelings of my sons.

    “There’s a fountain in our garden,
     With the brightest bluest tiles
     And the pleasantest stone lion
     Who spits into it and smiles! 
     It’s shaded by papyrus
     And reeds and grasses tall,
     Just a little land-locked harbor
     Beside the garden wall.

    “They talked of water-lilies
     And lotus pink and white—­
     We didn’t dare to say a word
     But we wished with all our might,
     For how could we manoeuvre
     The submarine we’ve got,
     If they go and clutter up the place
     With all that sort of rot.

    “But mother said she thought perhaps
     We’d wait another year,
     ’It’s such a lovely place to play,
     We ought to keep it clear.’ 
     So there’s nothing but a goldfish
     Who has to be a Hun,
     I don’t suppose he likes it,
     But gee, it’s lots of fun!”

Some day we are going to have a sun dial.  J——­ thought of a wonderful motto in the best Latin, and now he can’t remember it, which is harrowing, because it would be so stylish to have a perfectly original one.  It was something about not wanting to miss the shady hours for the sake of having all sunny ones.  At any rate, we are resolved not to have “I count none but sunny hours.”

There are all kinds of responsibilities in life, and picking the right shade of paint for a house you have to live in is a most wearing one.  Painting the trimming of ours in connection with the garden was very agitating.  I had sample bits of board painted and took them about town, trying them next to houses I liked, and at last decided on a wicked Spanish green that the storms of winter are expected to mellow.  As I saw it being put on the house I felt panic-stricken.  For a nice fresh vegetable or salad, yes, but for a house—­never!  And yet it is a great success!  I don’t know whether it has “sunk in,” as the painter consoled me by predicting, or whether it is that we are used to it; at any rate, every one likes it so much that I have cheerfully removed smears of it from the clothing of all the family, including the puppies’ tails.