The sentence was for three months, which suited me exactly, as I calculated that his release and our return to town would happily synchronize.  Mandy really stood the gaff pretty well and returned to her job, and an armed neutrality ensued, varied by mild outbreaks.  Essie was afraid of Mandy.  She said that she would never stay in the house with her alone; Mandy wouldn’t stay in the house alone after dark, so it became rather complicated.  We apparently had to take them or else find them weeping on the hillside, when we came back from a picnic.  In justice to the darky heart I must say that when Billie was taken very ill they buried the hatchet for the time, and helped us all to pull him through.

The summer was almost over when I began to suffer from a strange hallucination.  I kept seeing a colored gentleman slipping around corners when I approached.  As Mandy was usually near said corner, I certainly thought of George, but calmed myself with the reflection that he was safe in jail.  Not so.  George had experienced a change of heart and had behaved in so exemplary a manner that his sentence had been shortened two weeks, and what more natural than that he should join his wife?  It wasn’t that I was afraid of George; I was afraid for George.  I did not want him to meet Essie, for if Grandma’s smile had cost him so dearly, I hated to think of the effect of Essie’s black eyes and unbroken set of white teeth.  I needn’t have worried, for George was apparently “sick of lies and women,” and never let go his hold on the apron-string to which he was in duty bound.

This summer I am unusually fortunate, owing to a moment of clear vision that I had forty-eight hours before leaving town.  I had a Christian Science cook, a real artist if given unlimited materials, and she didn’t mind loneliness, as she said that God is everywhere; to which I heartily agreed.  I know that He is on this hill-top.  So far so good, but her idea of obeying Mr. Hoover’s precepts was not to mention that any staple was out until the last moment.  At about six o’clock she usually came pussy-footing to my door in the tennis shoes she always wore, to tell me that there wasn’t a potato in the house, or any butter.  Not so bad in Pasadena, with a man to send to the store, but very trying on a smiling hill-top, one mile from town, with me the only thing dimly suggestive of a chauffeur on the place.  At 3 A.M.  I resolved to bounce her, heavenly disposition and all.  I did, and engaged a cateress for what I should call a comfortable salary, rather than wages.  She can get up a very appetizing meal from sawdust and candle-ends, when necessary, and that is certainly what is needed nowadays.  Also, she has launched a wonderful counter-offensive against the ants.  There was a time when we ate our meals surrounded by a magic circle like Brunhilde, but ours was not of flames, but of ant powder.  Not that they mind it much.  I’m told that they rather dislike camphor, but do you know the present price of that old friend?