like a winter
overcoat just emerging from moth-balls rather than hurt his feelings. Of
course it makes some difference whether the pet that is annoying you
belongs to you or a neighbor. I doubt whether I could have loved Boost,
however, even if I had known him from the shell.

In spite of these various drawbacks we led a most happy life. It was so
easy. The bungalow was so attractively furnished; our own oranges and
limes grew at the door. There was just room for us with nothing to
spare, that had to be kept in order, and our landlady was as different
from the cold-hearted ones we had known as the bankers and real-estate
men. She seemed to be always trying to think of what we might need, and
to provide it. Dear Miss W----, she will never be a good business woman
from the world's point of view; she is too generous and too unselfish!
We all loved her. Many were the hours I inveigled her into wasting while
we sat on bales of the goats' hay and discussed life and the affairs of
the country--but mostly life with its curious twists and turns--its
generosities and its stinginesses. The boys spent their time in the
goat-pen making friends of the little kids, whose various advents added
so much interest to the spring, and learning much from Miss W----, whose
attitude towards life was so sane and wholesome for them to know.

"Buckaboo," the only buck on the ranch when we came, was a dashing young
creature, prancing about and kicking up his heels for the pure joy of
living. Joedy informed J---- that he reminded him of him, "only in a
goat way, father"--a tribute to the light-heartedness that California
had already brought to at least one member of the family.

If our Sabine Farm's vocation was goats, its avocation was surely roses.
We were literally smothered in them. A Cecil Brunner with its perfect
little buds, so heavily perfumed, covered one corner of the house. The
Lady Bankshire, with its delicate yellow blossoms, roofed our porch, and
the glorious Gold of Ophir, so thorny and with little fragrance,
concealed our laundry from the road. There was a garden of bush roses of
all kinds to cut for the house, and the crowning glory of all was a
hedge of "Tausend Schoen," growing luxuriantly, and a blaze of bloom in
May. After years of illness and worry, it was good to feel life coming
back joyously in a kind of haven--or heaven--of roses.

[Illustration]

THE LAND OF WHYNOT

When Alice stepped through the looking-gla