he is already!) The first towel has come and makes me
feel such a housekeeper! You're a lamb, but you'll finish life with a
tin cup and a "Pity the Blind" sign if you go on making "stitches as
fine as a fairy's first tooth."

We are to be married (see how calmly and steadily she sets down that
astounding word?) in June, and domesticity has descended upon me. I
read only women's magazines, household departments only, I read
recipes and memorize them, I haunt linen shops and furniture stores.
But, oh, I need a mother and a sister or two, and you'll simply have
to come down to me for a month. Can't you? Of course you can. Your
mother will feed the piano. I must have you.

I've found a house in West Ninth Street, near the blessed old Square,
close enough to the Brevoort when the kitchen is bolsheviking. It is
deliciously old with high ceilings and haughty chandeliers and
austere marble mantels, and all sorts of inconveniences which I
picturesquely adore, but which will leave the noble army of labor
quite cold. I shall make the drawing-room very English, part of my
precious rosewood and mahogany sent down from Valley View (though I
shall keep that house largely as it is) and cunning Kensington
curtains and little pots of ivy, and "set-pieces" of bead work, and
that dear, dim portrait of great-grandmother Vail in cap and
ringlets. The dining room will be sober, too, but there's a nook just
off it which I shall use for a breakfast room, looking out into the
prim, Prunella scrap of garden, and that I will make giddy-gay with
chintz and Minton. There'll be a remote workroom for me, far
upstairs, and a friendly brown study where Michael Daragh's lame dogs
may come to be helped over their stiles.

Sarah, I'm as domestic as a setting hen! I foresee I shall be a
living version of Mr. Solomon's lady of the Proverb--_working
willingly with my hands, rising while it is yet night_. (M.D. keeps
fearfully early hours)--_My candle going not out by night_ (candles
will be perfect in that house!). My husband shall, indeed, _be known
in the gates_, but he won't _sitteth_ there, for home will be far
too attractive. Nine to one, as always, I'll ply my trade, but
before and after office hours I'll be _looketh_-ing _well to the
ways of my household_ and _eateth_-ing not the bread of idleness
(except at