in the old desk, and went to New
York a week ago to see several suites of bachelor apartments that had
been offered him.

He writes this morning that he has found one to his liking, and will
return to-night, if he may, and stay over to-morrow to pack his things.
Meanwhile Miss Lavinia has sent her maids to clean and open her house in
"Greenwich Village," and will go home on Monday, spending her final
Sunday with me. Josephus went with the maids; the country had a
demoralizing effect upon him.

Miss Lavinia has been agitating moving uptown, several of her friends at
the Bluffs insisting that an apartment near the Park is much more
suitable for her than the little house so far from the social centre,
saying it is no wonder she is lonely and out of things; but yesterday she
told me that she had abandoned the idea of change, and had sent orders to
have her old back yard garden dismantled and the whole plot paved, as it
was now only a suitable place for drying clothes. Also that she had
written to ask her father's cousin Lydia, whose Staten Island home had
been built in by progress, very much like her own garden, to come to pass
the winter with her; and, lest she should repent of so rash an act, she
had given the letter to Evan before the ink was fairly dry, as he passed
the cottage on the way to the train, that he might post it in the city.

One consolation remains to me in the wreck of my romantic hopes for
her--Miss Lavinia has liked our neighbourhood so well that she has taken
the Alton cottage that she now occupies on a three years' lease, and
intends living here from May to October. The rambling garden is full of
old-time, hardy plants and roses, and oh, what good times we shall have
together there next spring, for of course she will stop with me when she
is getting things in order, and I can spare her enough roots and cuttings
to fill every spare inch of ground,--so, with Sylvia at Pine Ridge, what
more can I ask? The strain and hubbub of the Bluffs seems to be quite
vanishing from the foreground and merging with the horizon.

That reminds me that the people are drifting back quite rapidly now. The
golfers are afield again Sundays, and all talk of introducing fox hunting
with tame foxes; but they will have to learn the land, with its dips and
rocks, better first, or there will be a pretty crop of cracked crowns for
father. At present, I think that New England Prejudice will soon however
get the upper hand here, an