g allotted to
each house, for lawn and garden of summer vegetables, though no
arbitrary boundaries separate the plots. The houses are intended for
people of refined taste and moderate means who, only being able to leave
town during the school vacation, from middle June to late September, yet
desire to have a bit of garden to tend and to have flowers about them
other than the decorative but limited piazza boxes or row of geraniums
around the porch.

The vegetable gardens consist of four squares, conveniently intersected
by paths, these squares to be edged by annuals or bulbs of rapid growth,
things that, planted in May, will begin to be interesting when the
tenants come a month later.

But here am I, on the verge of rushing into another theme, without
having expressed our disappointment that you cannot bear us company
this summer, yet I must say that the edge of regret is somewhat dulled
by my interest in the progress and result of your garden vacation, which
to us at least is a perfectly unique idea, and quite worthy of the
inventive genius of _The Man from Everywhere_.

Plainly do I see by the scope of this same letter of yours that the
records of The Garden, You, and I, instead of being a confection of
undistinguishable ingredients blended by a chef of artistic soul, will
be a home-made strawberry shortcake, for which I am to furnish the
necessary but uninspired crust, while you will supply the filling of
fragrant berries.

With the beginning of your vacation begin my questions domestic that
threaten to overbalance your questions horticultural. If the Infant
should wail at night, do you expect to stay quietly out "in camp" and
not steal on tiptoe to the house, and at least peep in at the window?
Also, you have put a match-making thought in a head swept clean of all
such clinging cobwebs since Sukey Crandon married Carthy Latham and,
turning their backs on his ranch experiment, they decided to settle near
the Bradfords at the Ridge, where presently there will be another garden
growing. If you have no one either in the family or neighbourhood likely
to attract _The Man from Everywhere_, why may we not have him? Jane
Crandon is quite unexpectedly bright, as frank as society allows, this
being one of his requirements, besides having grown very pretty since
she has virtually become daughter to Mrs. Jenks-Smith and had sufficient
material in her gowns to allow her chest to develop.

But more of this later; to return t