a fell instantly in love, and a
tiny baby in the care of a nurse. Julia spent a good deal of her time in
Sausalito during the visit, and more than once she and Barbara took the
four children to Mill Valley, and spent a few days with Richie, quite as
happy as the boys and Anna were in the free country life.

Five years of marriage had somewhat changed Barbara; she was thinner,
and freckled rather than rosy, and she wore her thick dark hair in a
fashion Julia did not very much admire. Also she seemed to care less for
dress than she once had done, even though what she wore was always the
handsomest of its kind. But she was an eagerly admiring and most devoted
wife, calmly assuming that the bronzed and silent "Francis" could do no
wrong, and Julia thought she had never seen a more charming and
conscientious mother. Barbara, whose husband's uncle was a lord, who had
been presented at the English court, and whose mail was peppered with
coats-of-arms, nursed her infant proudly and publicly, and was heard to
mention to old friends--not always women either--social events that had
occurred "just before Geordie came" or "when I was expecting Arthur."
Her rather thin face would brighten to its old beauty when Geordie and
Arthur, stamping in, bare kneed and glowing, recounted to her the joys
of Sausalito, and in evening dress she was quite magnificent, and
somehow seemed more at ease than American women ever do. Her efficiency
left even the capable Julia gasping and outdistanced. Barbara was equal
to every claim husband, children, family, and friends could make. She
came down to an eight o'clock breakfast, a chattering little son on each
side of her, announcing briskly that the tiny Malcolm had already had
his bath. She started the little people on the day's orderly round of
work and play while opening letters and chatting with her father; earned
the housemaid's eternal affection by personally dusting the big
drawing-room and replacing the flowers; answered the telephone in her
pleasantly modulated voice; faced her husband during his ten o'clock
breakfast, and discussed the foreign news with him in a manner Julia
thought extraordinarily clever; and at eleven came with the baby into
her mother's sunny morning-room for a little feminine gossip over
Malcolm's second breakfast. Barbara never left a note unanswered, no old
friend was neglected; tea hour always found the shady side porch full of
callers, children strayed from the candy on