It is really an adorable little place with a very flowery garden, surrounded by arbors covered with roses, wistaria, and jasmine (I think I should say we have been very fortunate in our dwelling-places since we emigrated), and passers-by usually stop and comment favorably.  Young men bring their girls and show them the sort of little place they’d like to own, and often they ring the door-bell for further inquiries.  Driven to bay, I have put a price of half a million on our tiny estate.  When I mention this, the investigators usually retreat hastily, looking anxiously over their shoulders to see if my keeper is anywhere in sight.  As to the real-estate men, they are more in number than the sands of the sea, and the competition is razor-edged.  If you have the dimmest idea of ever buying a lot or house, or if you are comfortably without principle, you won’t need to keep a motor at all.  The real-estate men will see that you get lots of fresh air, and they are most obliging about letting you do your marketing on the way home.  We have an especial friend in the business.  He never loses hope, or his temper.  It was he that originally found us “The Sabine Farm.”  He let us live there in peace till we were rested, for which we are eternally grateful, and then he began to throw out unsettling remarks.  The boys ought to have a place to call home where they could grow up with associations.  Wasn’t it foolish to pay rent when we might be applying that money toward the purchase of a house?  Of course it told on us in time and we began to look about.  “The Sabine Farm” would not do, as it was too far from J——­’s business, and the lotus-flower existence of our first two years was ours no longer.  Every lot we looked at had irresistible attractions, and insurmountable objections.  At last, however, we settled on a piece of land looking toward the mountains, with orange trees on either hand, paid a part of the price, and supposed it was ours for better or worse.  Just then the war darkened and we felt panicky, but heaven helped us, for there was a flaw in the title, and our money came trotting back to us, wagging its tail.  It was after this that we stumbled on the arbored bungalow, and bought it in fifteen minutes.  I asked Mr. W——­ if he liked bass fishing, and whether he’d ever found one gamier to land than our family.  He will probably let us live quietly for a little while, and then he will undoubtedly tell us that this place is too small for us.  I know him!

In case of death or bankruptcy the situation is much more intense.  Every mouse hole has its alert whiskered watcher, and after a delay of a few days for decency, such pressure is brought to bear that surviving relatives rarely have the courage to stand pat.  Probably a change of surroundings is good for them.

If people can’t be induced to sell, often they will rent.  There is an eccentric old woman in town who owns a most lovely lot, beautifully planted, that is the hope and snare of every real-estate man, but, though poor, she will not part with it.  She has a house, however, that she rents in the season.  One day some Eastern people were looking at it, and timidly said that one bath-room seemed rather scant for so large a house.