ng with Evan Baldwin at the club the other night."

"Who was the belle of the ball, Matt?" I asked him, with a flame in my
cheeks, for the pink and lavender chiffon gown Bess had worn was one of
the Voudaine creations that I had brought from Paris and sold her after the
crash.

"Oh, Bess always is when you are not there and, Ann, don't for a moment
think that I--I--" Poor Matthew was stuttering while I rubbed the tip of my
nose against his sleeve in the way of a caress, as I had a feed-bucket in
one hand and a water-pan in the other.

"Do go and shop with Polly and Bess as a force for protection. I must have
a quiet afternoon to commune with my garden," I commanded.

"Sometimes you make me so mad, Ann Craddock, that--that--" Matthew was
stuttering when Uncle Cradd appeared at the back door to chat with him, and
I made my escape through the barn and out into the woods. I had thought
that I saw a glint of Peckerwood red pass through the pasture that way, and
I was determined that Pan shouldn't give me and the garden the slip as he
always did when he saw anybody around.

As I ran rapidly through the old pasture, which was overgrown with
buckbushes and sassafras sprouts, which were turning into great pink and
green fern clumps in the warm April sunshine, I gave the two or three
Saint-Saens Delilah notes which had been robbed of any of their wicked
Delilah flavor for me by having heard Mr. G. Bird sing them so beautifully
on the stage of the Metropolitan in that first dream night in Elmnest. But
I called and then called in vain until at last I came out to the huge old
rock that juts out from the edge of the rugged little knoll at the far end
of the pasture. Here I paused and looked down on Elmnest in the afternoon
sunshine with what seemed to be suddenly newly opened eyes. I had been in
and out of Elmnest to such an extent for the last six weeks that I hadn't
had a chance to get off and look at it from an outsider's standpoint, and
now suddenly I was taking that view of it. The old rose and green brick
house, covered in by its wide, gray shingle roof, the gables and windows
of which were beginning to be wreathed in feathery and pink young vines,
which were given darker notes here and there in their masses by the sturdy
green of the honey-suckles, hovered down on a small plateau rear-guarded by
the barn and sheds, flanked by the garden and the gnarled old orchard, and
from its front door the long avenue of elms led far dow