her in the least. We never plan for one another, or interfere in
any way, and each takes it for granted that if the other desires
assistance of any sort, she will ask for it.

Miss Lavinia pokes about the garden at her own sweet will. I gather the
flowers,--I could not give that up to any one,--and she takes charge of
arranging them in the house. She is very fond of doing fancy work, I am
not, so that her offer to re-cover the sofa cushions in den, study, and
library comes in the light of a household benefaction.

Besides this, she has a very good effect upon the boys, and without being
at all fussy, she is instilling their absorbent minds quite unconsciously
with some little bits of the quaint good breeding of other days that they
will never forget. They love to go to town with her, one of her first
stipulations being that if I chose to include her in some of our long
drives, well and good, otherwise she wished the liberty of telephoning
the stable for horse and man, whenever she pleased, without my troubling
myself about her movements.

Meanwhile, I really think that this living in the midst of a family
without losing her independence is making Lavinia Dorman grow backwards
toward youth. She has bought an outing hat without strings, trimmed with
fluffy white, she takes her work out under the trees in a basket, and
has given up tying her head in a thin and a thick veil every time she
drives out. If she could learn to sit comfortably back and lounge a
trifle, and if a friendly magpie would only chance along and steal her
stock of fronts, for a nest, so that she would be obliged to show her
own lovely hair that shades like oxidized silver, the transformation
would be complete.

Martin Cortright also is developing mental energy. He always had
considerable physical vim, as I found the Sunday after he first came,
when he accompanied Evan upon one of his long walks, and was not used up
by it. He has stopped fumbling with reference books and shuffling bits of
paper by the hour, and writes industriously every day by the west window
of the attic, where he can refresh himself by looking out of the window
at the garden, or across at the passers on the highway. I was afraid that
he might wish to read the results nightly to either father or Evan, but
no, he keeps them safely under lock and key in a great teacher's desk
that he bought second hand over in town. He stays to dine with us two or
three nights a week, but he has grown