en. Your father won't go there at all now.
As for Claire and myself, we await political ruptures before we
indulge in social ones. And it doesn't look like war, now that Von
Tirpitz has been sent to Coventry.

"This, Garry darling, is my budget of news. Bring your guests
whenever you please. You wouldn't bring anybody you oughtn't to;
your family is liberal, informal, pleasantly indifferent, and
always delightfully busy with its individual manias and fads; so
come as soon as you please--sooner, please--because, strange as it
may seem, your mother would like to see you."

The letter was what he had expected. But, as always, it made him very
grateful.

"Wonderful mother I have," he murmured, opening another letter from
his father:

"DEAR GARRET:

"Why the devil don't you come up? You've missed the cream of the
fishing. There's nothing doing in the streams now, but at sunrise
and toward evening they're breaking nicely in the lake.

"I've put in sixty thousand three-year transplants this year on
that sandy stretch. They are white, Scotch and Austrian. Your
children will enjoy them.

"The dogs are doing well. There's one youngster, the litter-tyrant
of Goldenrod's brood, who ought to make a field winner. But
there's no telling. You and I'll have 'em out on native woodcock.

"There are some grouse, but we ought to let them alone for the
next few years. As for the pheasants, they're everywhere now, in
the brake, silver-grass, and weeds, peeping, scurrying,
creeping--cunning little beggars and growing wild as quail.

"The horses are all right. The crops promise well. Labour is
devilish scarce, and unsatisfactory when induced to accept
preposterous wages. What we need are coolies, if these lazy,
native slackers continue to handicap the farmers who have to
employ them. The American 'hired man'! He makes me sick. With few
exceptions, he is incredibly stupid, ignorant, unwilling, lazy.

"He's sometimes a crook, too; he takes pay for what he doesn't do;
he steals your time; he cares absolutely nothing about your
interests or convenience; he will leave you stranded in harvest
time, without any notice at all; decent treatment he does not
appreciate; he'll go without a warning even, leaving your horses
unfed, your cattle unwatered, your crops rotting!

"He's a degenerate relic of those real men who broke up the
primaeval wilderness. He is the reaso