Hope House, for Michael
Daragh.

Sarah Farraday, resigned but never reconciled, shared vicariously in the
life-more-abundantly which had come to her best friend, and she always
said, with a small sigh, that nothing Jane did or said could ever
surprise her again, but she was nevertheless startled, after a long
silence, to receive a fat letter bearing a Mexican stamp.

_On a Meandering Train, bound, more or less for Guadalajara_, it began,
and was dated December the seventh.

SALLY DEAR,

You must be thinking me quite mad at last, not hearing from me for
weeks, and then--this! Like the old woman in the fairy tale,--"Can
this be I?"

I decided all in a wink to fly to California and visit my mother's
cousins, the Budders. I needed a drastic change, Sally. I haven't had
a real play-time for a year, and it's four years and a month since I
left home for New York--can you realize it? Four lucky, beautiful,
shining years. But oh, I'm tired, old dear! So tired that my brain
creaks. I think there comes a time, in creative work, for playing
hooky. Write and run away and live to write another day. So I wired
the Budders I was coming and took the train the same day, and when I
reached San Francisco I found them all packed up for this Mexican
trip,--indeed, they were sitting on their trunks with a tentative
ticket for me in their hands. And I was pleased pink to come. The
Budders (doesn't Budder sowd as if I ad a code id by ed?) are nice,
comfortable creatures,--the sort who are called the salt of the earth
but in reality aren't anything so piquant. They're the boiled
potatoes and graham bread and rice pudding. You, now, Sally darling,
are the angel cake, and there's not half enough of you; I'm the
olives and anchovies and caviar ... a little goes a long way ... and
Michael Daragh is the rich and creamy milk of human kindness, always
being skimmed by a needy, greedy world.

Behold me, then, ambling through Mexico, a Spanish phrase book in my
lap and peace in my heart.

_Adios!_

JANE.

P.S. I have just read this over, Sarah. Fiction of purest ray serene.
I'm not tired. I don't need to play. It was a very bad time for me to
leave,--my work screamed after me all across the continent. I had to
fly for my life and liberty.

Sally, friend of my youth, patient receptacle of all my moods and
tenses