The problem under discussion this morning was that of getting a nurse for Timothy Tressady, aged two years.  Elma, the silent, undemonstrative Swedish woman who had been with the family since Timothy’s birth, had started back to Stockholm two months ago, and since then at least a dozen unsatisfactory applicants for her position had taken their turn at the Rising Water Ranch.

Mrs. Tressady, born and brought up in New York, sometimes sighed as she thought of her mother’s capped and aproned maids; of Aunt Anna’s maids; of her sister Lydia’s maids.  Sometimes in the hot summer, when the sun hung directly over the California bungalow for seven hours every day, and the grass on the low, rolling hills all about was dry and slippery, when Joe Parlona forgot to drive out from Emville with ice and mail, and Elma complained that Timmy could not eat his luncheon on the porch because of buzzing “jellow yackets,” Molly Tressady found herself thinking other treasonable thoughts—­ thoughts of packing, of final telegrams, of the Pullman sleeper, of Chicago in a blowing mist of rain, of the Grand Central at twilight, with the lights of taxicabs beginning to move one by one into the current of Forty-second Street—­and her heart grew sick with longings.  And sometimes in winter, when rain splashed all day from the bungalow eaves, and Beaver Creek rose and flooded its banks and crept inch by inch toward the garden gate, and when from the late dawn to the early darkness not a soul came near the ranch—­she would have sudden homesick memories of Fifth Avenue, three thousand miles away, with its motor-cars and its furred women and its brilliant tea-rooms.  She would suddenly remember the opera-house and the long line of carriages in the snow, and the boys calling the opera scores.

However, for such moods the quickest cure was a look at Jerry—­ strong, brown, vigorous Jerry—­tramping the hills, writing his stories, dreaming over his piano, and sleeping deep and restfully under the great arch of the stars.  Jerry had had a cold four years ago—­“just a mean cold,” had been the doctor’s cheerful phrase; but what terror it struck to the hearts that loved Jerry!  Molly’s eyes, flashing to his mother’s eyes, had said:  “Like his father—­like his aunt—­like the little sister who died!” And for the first time Jerry’s wife had found herself glad that little Jerry Junior—­he who could barely walk, who had as yet no words—­had gone away from them fearlessly into the great darkness a year before.  He might have grown up to this, too.

So they came to California, and big Jerry’s cold did not last very long in the dry heat of Beaver Creek Valley.  He and Molly grew so strong and brown and happy that they never minded restrictions and inconveniences, loneliness and strangeness—­and when a strong and brown and happy little Timothy joined the group, Molly renounced forever all serious thoughts of going home.  California became home.  Such friends as chance brought their way must be their only friends; such comfort as the dry little valley and the brown hills could hold must suffice them now.  Molly exulted in sending her mother snapshots of Timmy picking roses in December, and in heading July letters:  “By our open fire—­for it’s really cool to-day.”