-"

"If you knew as much about housekeeping as you do about golf," she said,
"you would know that servants do not know how to preserve fruit. Last
year I put up more than two hundred cans, and unless I can drag Mr.
Harding away from here, it will be too late for everything except pears
and quinces, and he does not care much for either."

Think of the wife of a multi-millionaire standing over a hot kitchen
fire and preserving tomatoes, cherries, grapes, jams, jells, and all
that kind of thing! I did not exactly know how to sympathise with her.

"It is nice down here," she said, after a pause, "but there's nothing to
do."

"The drives are splendid," I said, "and I'm sure you would become
interested in golf or tennis if you took them up."

"I mean that there's no work to do," she said. "I nearly had a row with
my husband before he would let me darn his socks. He does not know it,
but I keep the maid out of our rooms so that I can do the work myself.
It's awful to sit around all day with nothing to do but read and do
fancy work. I hate fancy work. If you have any socks which need darning,
Mr. Smith, I wish you would let me have them."

We both laughed, but she was in earnest and made me promise I would turn
over to her any socks which show signs of wear. I shall keep them as a
memento.

That is the kind of a woman I should like for a mother-in-law.

And the more I see of Mr. Harding the better I like him. But I must
record the many things which happened that afternoon and evening at
Bishop's.

The fine old farmhouse is ideally located on a rising slope of ground.
It is surrounded with the most beautiful grove of horse-chestnut trees
in this section of the country.

The house is more than a hundred years old, and Bishop has the sense
not to attempt an improvement in its exterior architecture. When a boy I
spent most of my spare time in and around the Bishop house. Joe Bishop
and I were chums, but when I went away to college, Joe wandered out
West, and it is years since I have seen him. I have often thought that I
must have been an awful source of bother to the Bishops, but they never
seemed to mind it much. All of their children are grown up and married,
but here the old folks are, working away as hard as when I was a child.

I suppose James Bishop is about Mr. Harding's age, somewhere between
fifty and fifty-five. He in no way resembles the farmer of the cartoons.
He wears a stubby moustache, and looks more the