pen door and made me drowsy, and I
turned from the light toward the now empty fireplace.

"A snap! and the air seemed suddenly exhilarating! Was it an electric
spark from the telephone? No, simply the clarifying of the thoughts that
had been puzzling me.

"Maria Maxwell shall come during our vacations,--at that moment I
decided to separate the time into several periods,--she shall take
entire charge of all within doors.

"Bart and I will divide off a portion of the old hay-barn with screens,
and camp out there (unless in case of very bad thunder or one of the
cold July storms that we sometimes have). Anastasia shall serve us a
very simple hot dinner at noon in the summer kitchen, and keep a supply
of cooked food in the pantry, from which we can arrange our breakfasts
and suppers in the opposite side of the barn from our sleeping place,
and there we can have a table, chairs, and a little oil stove for making
tea and coffee.

"Maria, besides attending to domestic details, must also inspect the
mail and only show us letters when absolutely necessary, as well as to
say 'not at home,' with the impenetrable New York butler manner to every
one who calls.

"Thus Bart and I will be equally free without the rending of heart
strings--free to love and enjoy home from without, for it is really
strange when one comes to think of it, we learn of the outside world by
looking out the windows, but we so seldom have time to stand in another
view-point and look in. Thus it occurred to me, instead of taking one
long vacation, we can break the time into three or four in order to
follow the garden seasons and the work they suggest. A bit at the end of
May for both planning and locating the spring wild flowers before they
have wholly shed their petals, and so on through the season, ending in
October by the transplanting of trees and shrubs that we have marked and
in setting out the hardy roses, for which we shall have made a garden
according to the plan that Aunt Lavinia says is to be among the early
Garden, You, and I records.

"_May 15._ Maria Maxwell has joyfully agreed to come the twenty-first,
having obtained a substitute for her final week of teaching, as well as
rented her 'parlor car,' as she calls her flat, to a couple of students
who come from the South for change of air and to attend summer school at
Columbia College. It seems that many people look upon New York as a
summer watering place. Strange that a difference in climate