mine, and we really made a very pleasant fuss over each other. Rodney
had several bright and beamish ideas for the next few days, but I
reminded him that while he may be an Idle Rich, I'm a Laboring Class,
and I frugally accepted one invitation out of four. "A Country Mouse
came to visit a Town Mouse--" But I can clearly see that he will
greatly add to the livableness of life.

I have bought myself a second-hand, elderly, but still spry
think-mobile with only a slight inclination to stutter, and a
pompous-looking eraser with a little fringe of black whiskers on its
chin, and I'm beginning to begin, Sally, dear!

It's going to be a marvelous place to work. Nice old Hetty Hills
keeps a really super-boarding house, and the personnel isn't going to
be in the least distracting,--staid, concert-going ladies, some
teachers, a musician or two, a middle-aged bank clerk; only two other
youngish people, both Settlement workers, a man and a woman. Her name
is Emma Ellis and she's only about thirty, but she acts fifty--you
know--shabby hair and dim fingernails and a righteously shining
nose,--and I wish you could see her hat! It looks exactly like the
lid to something. She doesn't like me at all, though I've been
virtuously nice to her. The man is a big, lean Irishman, named
Michael Daragh. Don't you like the sound of that, Sally? It makes me
think of those Yeats and Synge things I was reading up on just before
I left home. He's like a person in a book,--very tall and very thin
and yet he seems like a perfect tower of strength, some way. His hair
is ash blond and his eyes are gray and look straight through you and
for miles beyond you, and he has splashes of good color in his thin,
clear cheeks. He has a quaint, long, Irish, upper lip. I'd describe
him as a large body of man entirely surrounded by conscience. (I'm
describing him so fully to you because it's such good practice for
me, and I know you don't mind.) His clothes are old, but not so much
shabby as mellow, like old, good leather. And such a brogue, Sally!
It could be eaten with a spoon! He asked me at once what I meant to
do (he can't conceive, of course, that one isn't a do-er!), and when
I said that I meant to write, at least, to try, he said:

"'Tis the great gift, surely. When our like"--he looked at Emma
Ellis--"are toiling with