t the city was very different, yet when I got out of the buggy
in front of the house the look of the street startled me. For a moment
even the house seemed strange. But that was only because the other
houses were all about it. As far as one looked up the hill there was
nothing but thick houses, and queer little shops were crowding up the
block so close that we had the appearance of being almost down-town.
Even inside the house looked different, but quite beautifully
different, done over with lovely, fresh papers, and Japanese mattings;
but what touched and pleased me most of all was to find the picture of
mother, which had used to hang over father's dressing-table, now in my
room, above my bed. "You need it now more than I do," he said, and
though I couldn't see just why I needed it, I loved to look at it. The
amusing part of it was that mother in the picture was holding me--a
little me--a baby two years old. Myself would never look out at me.
But mother looked always, with the same half-brave, half-timid glance,
when, sitting on the bed, I made her my confidences.

With all my new responsibilities, and my new clothes I felt as if I had
somehow been "done over" too. Yet it was surprising how quickly I
became used to the patter of my long petticoats around my feet as I
walked, the weight of all my hair upon my head, and my stately pouring
of the tea at the foot of the dinner-table. Father's friends were
always coming in and out, and staying to luncheon or dinner, and with
their high silk hats, their elegant bows to me, and their laughing at
things I said which were not in the least funny, at first they confused
me not a little. But I grew accustomed to them, too; I grew even to
like them, especially Mr. Dingley, father's greatest friend, who was
the district attorney. He was a big, dark man, with a broad face, and
a frown that never came out of his forehead. He looked frightfully
severe, but I soon found out he was really quite easy-going, much more
so than father, and often I could get around Mr. Dingley when father,
for all his being pleasant, wouldn't have given an inch. But father
said he had to be very stern, or other people would spoil me. By that
he meant not so much Mr. Dingley, who was the same to everybody, as
Senora Mendez, who had been mother's greatest friend. She had been a
New England girl, who, in the early days of California, had married a
Spanish gentleman. She was lovely to me. It was at