a flamingo's beak rose in air, as she stood
erect, or as nearly erect as she ever stood nowadays. She tossed a few
uprooted weeds over the lilac-hedge, and, clumping up the steps of the
porch, slumped into a chair. Chairs had once been her luxury, too. She
carried a dish-pan full of green peas, and as her gaze wandered over the
beloved scene her wrinkled fingers were busy among the pods, shelling
them expertly, as if they knew their way about alone.

The old man sighed, the deep sigh of ultimate contentment. "Well, Maw,
as the fellow says in the circus, here we are again."

"Here we are again, Paw."

They always said the same thing about this time of year, when they
wearied of the splendid home they had established as the capital of
their estate and came back to the ground from which they had sprung.
James Coburn always said:

"Well, Maw, as the fellow says in the circus, here we are again."

And Sarah Gregg Coburn always answered:

"Here we are again, Paw."

This place was to them what old slippers are to tired feet. Here they
put off the manners and the dignities their servants expected of them,
and lapsed into shabby clothes and colloquialisms, such as they had been
used to when they were first married, long before he became the master
of a thousand acres, of cattle upon a hundred hills, of blooded
thoroughbreds and patriarchal stallions, of town lots and a bank, and
of a record as Congressman for two terms. This pilgrimage had become a
sort of annual elopement, the mischief of two white-haired runaways. Now
that the graveyard or the city had robbed them of all their children,
they loved to turn back and play at an Indian-summer honeymoon.

This year, for the first time, Maw had consented to the aid of a "hired
girl." She refused to bring one of the maids or the cook from the big
house, and engaged a woman from the village nearest at hand--and then
tried to pretend the woman wasn't there. It hurt her to admit the
triumph of age in her bones, but there was compensation in the privilege
of hearing some one else faintly clattering over the dish-washing of
evenings, while she sat on the porch with Paw and watched the sunset
trail its gorgeous banners along the heavens and across the little toy
sky of the pond.

It was pleasant in the mornings, too, to lie abed in criminal indolence,
hearing from afar the racket of somebody else building the fire. After
breakfast she made a brave beginning, only to turn the bro