in a
paper bag, but I can see now that it is time for me to remain indoors
and give young people like yourself a chance, Wilhelmina.

So, if I can do anything evenings while you are out that will assist
you, such as stoning raisins or neighboring windows, command me. I am no
cook, of course, but I can peel apples or grind coffee or hold your
head for you when you need sympathy. I could also soon learn to do the
plain cooking, I think, and friends who come to see us after this have
agreed to bring their dinners.

There is no reason why harmony should not be restored among us and the
old sunlight come back to our roof tree.

Another thing I wish to write before I close this humiliating personal.
I wish to take back any harsh and bitter words about your singing. I
said that you sang like a shingle-mill, but I was mad when I said it,
and I wronged you. I was maddened by hunger and you told me that mush
and milk was the proper thing for a brain worker, and you refused to
give me any dope on my dumpling. Goaded to madness by this I said that
you sang like a shingle-mill, but it was not my better, higher nature
that spoke. It was my grosser and more gastric nature that asserted
itself, and I now desire to take it back. You do not sing like a
shingle-mill; at least so much as to mislead a practiced ear.

Your voice has more volume, and when your upper register is closed, is
mellower than any shingle-mill I ever heard.

Come back, Wilhelmina. We need you every hour.

After you went away we tried to set the bread as we had seen you do it,
but it was not a success. The next day it come off the nest with a
litter of small, sallow rolls which would easily resist the action of
acids.

If you cannot come back will you please write and tell me how you are
getting along and how you contrive to insert air-holes into home-made
bread?

[Illustration: A HINT of SPRING.]

'Twas but a hint of Spring--for still
The atmosphere was sharp and chill--
Save where the genial sunshine smote
The shoulders of my overcoat,
And o'er the snow beneath my feet
Laid spectral fences down the street.

My shadow even seemed to be
Elate with some new buoyancy,
And bowed and bobbed in my advance
With trippingest extravagance,
And when a bird sang out somewhere,
It seemed to wheel with me, and stare.

Above I heard a rasping stir--
And on the roof the carpenter