ranch less than four
months during the next spring, and before the blossoms had finally
fallen sufficient reasons were found to move them back nearer people and
the ordinary diversions of life. Water, it was discovered, could not be
got in sufficient quantity. The relaxing climate of the south did not
seem to agree with Adelle. And, above all, a child was expected.

The little boy was born in Bellevue. He had come to them by accident,
for neither felt that it was yet the right time to have children; but
Adelle recognized almost at once that it was likely to be a happy
accident for her and welcomed it with all proper fervor. It served, at
any rate, to settle them in California for the present. They decided to
buy the place they had rented upon the hills and live there for most of
the year. And it also served to strengthen the bond between husband and
wife, which was wearing dangerously thin in places. With the coming of
the child the family was constituted, and another interest was given to
Adelle, which compensated for Archie's pettish moods. The child also
released Archie from the constant attention which Adelle exacted of him,
and permitted him more of that precious "freedom," which he found wealth
did not always bring.

Thus they definitely started their California life.

XXXII

Bellevue is one of those country towns in the neighborhood of a large
city that have flourished especially since the discovery of the
motor-car. It took quite two hours to reach it from San Francisco by
train and nearly that by fast driving in a car, owing to the poor roads.
Thus it was removed for the present from the contaminating contact of
the "commuter" and all the commonness of suburbanism. Bellevue had, of
course, its country club, with a charming new clubhouse, where polo was
played in season, as well as the humbler forms of sport such as golf and
tennis, and where a good deal of lively entertaining went on at all
seasons. It was an old settlement; that is, it had been the country home
of a few families for almost two generations, the first of the great
places having been developed in the seventies when the railroad fortunes
were being made. Besides these older estates, which were marked by the
luxuriance of their planting and by the ugliness of their houses, there
was a growing number of smaller, more modern estates with attractive
houses, and also a little settlement "across the tracks" of
trades-people and servants. Exc