re is plenty of time to ask questions in
July and August when the town has its dull season."

So York came to dinner in one of his rarest moods, a host to make one's
worries flee away.

Jerry had reread her letter in the seclusion of her room at "Castle
Cluny." It did not need a third reading, for every word seemed graven on
the reader's brain. In carefully typewritten form, with only the
signature in the writer's own hand, it ran:

MY ALWAYS DEAR JERRY,--I should have written you days ago, but
I did not get back to "Eden" until you had been gone a week. We
are all so eager to hear how you are, and to know about the
Swaim estate which you went to find. But we are a hundred times
more eager to see your face here again. I wish you were here
to-night, for I have been in the depths of doubt and
indecision, from which your presence would have lifted me. I
hope I have done the right thing, now it is done, and I'll wait
to hear from you more eagerly than I ever waited for a letter
before. Yet I feel sure you will approve of my course after you
get over your surprise and have taken time to think carefully.

I had a long heart-to-heart talk with Aunt Jerry to-day. Don't
smile and say a purse-to-purse talk. Full purses don't talk to
empty ones. They speak a different language. But this to-day
was a real confidence game as you might say. I received the
confidence if I didn't die as game as you would wish me to.

To be plain, little cousin mine, I want you dreadfully to come
back, so much so that I have decided to give up painting for
the present and take a clerkship in the bank with Uncle
Cornie's partners. I can see your eyes open wide with surprise
and disappointment when I tell you that Aunt Jerry has really
converted me to her way of thinking. My hours are easy and the
pay is good. Not so much as I had hoped to have some day from
my brush and may have yet, if this work doesn't make me fat and
lazy, for there is really very little responsibility about it,
just a decent accuracy. This makes so many things possible, you
see, and then I have the satisfaction of knowing I am doing a
service for Aunt Jerry--and, to be explicit--to put myself
where I shall not have to worry over things when you come home.
So I'm happy now. And when you get here I shall begin to live
again. I