village women coming
in for tea and sewing; it was all so sane and so sweet!"

"Our coming here was the merest chance. My father and I were on our way
home from Japan, you know, and he suddenly remembered that the Hollys
were near San Francisco, and we came up here for a night. That," said
Mrs. Burgoyne in a lower tone, as if half to herself, "that was twenty
years ago; I was only twelve, but I've never forgotten it. Fred and
Oliver and Emily and I had our supper on the side porch; and afterward
they played in the garden, but I was shy--I had never played--and Mrs.
Holly kept me beside her on the porch, and talked to me now and then,
and finally she asked me if I would like to spend the summer with her.
Like to!--I wonder my heart didn't burst with joy! Father said no; but
after we children had gone to bed, they discussed it again. How Emily
and I PRAYED! And after a while Fred tiptoed down to the landing, and
came up jubilant. 'I heard mother say that what clothes Sidney needed
could be bought right here,' he said. Emily began to laugh, and I to
cry--!" She turned her back on Barry, and he, catching a glimpse of her
wet eyes, took up the conversation himself.

"I don't remember her very well," he said; "a boy wouldn't. She died
soon after that summer, and the boys went off to school."

"Yes, I know," the lady said thoughtfully. "I had the news in Rome--a
hot, bright, glaring day. It was nearly a month after her death, then.
And even then, I said to myself that I'd come back here, some day. But
it's not been possible until now; and now," her voice was bright and
steady again, "here I am. And I don't like to hear an old friend
abusing Santa Paloma."

"It's a nice enough place," Barry admitted, "but the people are--well,
you wait until you meet the women! Perhaps they're not much worse than
women everywhere else, but sometimes it doesn't seem as if the women
here had good sense. I don't mean the nice quiet ones who live out on
the ranches and are bringing up a houseful of children, but this River
Street crowd."

"Why, what's the matter with them?" asked Mrs. Burgoyne with vivacity.

"Oh, I mean this business of playing bridge four afternoons a week, and
running to the club, and tearing around in motor-cars all day Sunday,
and entertaining the way they think people do it in New York, and
getting their dresses in San Francisco instead of up here," Barry
explained disgustedly. "Some of them would be nice enough if the