stock. But why bother? it is
only midsummer now, grazing is plentiful and seems to suit the needs of
this spunky little beast, and the Infant riding him "across country," as
Bart calls her wanderings about Opal Farm, is a spectacle too pretty to
be denied us. Yes, I know I'm silly, and that you have the twins to
rhapsodize about, but girls are so much more picturesque in the clothes!
What! thought she wore gingham bloomers! Yes, but not all the time, for
Maria will frill her up and run her with ribbons of afternoons!

* * * * *

Back to the house and garden! I'm wandering, but then I'm Lady Lazy this
summer, as _The Man from Everywhere_ calls me, and naturally a bit
inconsequent! As I said, Bart is at the office daily, and will be for
another week, but Lady Lazy has not returned to what Maria Maxwell calls
"The Tyranny of the Three M's,"--the mending basket, the market book,
and the money-box! I was willing, quite willing; in fact it is only fair
that Maria should have her time of irresponsibility, for I know that she
has half a dozen invitations to go to pleasant places and meet people,
one being from Lavinia Cortright to visit her shore cottage. I'm always
hoping that Maria may meet the "right man" some summer day, but that she
surely will never do if she stays here.

"I've everything systematized, and it's easier for me to go on than
drop the needles for a fortnight or so and then find, on coming back,
that you have been knitting a mitten when I had started the frame of a
sock," Maria said, laughing; "make flower hay while the crop is to be
had for the gathering, my lady! Another year you may not have such free
hands!"

Then my protests grew weaker and weaker, for the establishment had
thriven marvellously well without my daily interference. The jam closet
shows rows of everything that might be made of strawberries, cherries,
currants, and raspberries, and it suddenly struck me that possibly if
domestic machinery is set going on a consistent basis, whether it is not
a mistake to do too much oiling and tightening of a screw here and
there, unless distinct symptoms of a halt render it absolutely
necessary.

"Very well," I said, with a show of spunk, "give me one single task,
that I may not feel as if I had no part in the homemaking. Something as
ornamental and frivolous as you choose, but that shall occupy me at
least two hours a day!"

Maria paused a moment; we were then standing