help her to keep him in his place. His
pomposity grows daily but he eyes me with suspicion when he sees me in
secret conclave with Petunia.

"We needs a man around this place," I heard him mutter the other day as
I left the kitchen.

I wonder!

The garden has been weeded, replanted, trained, clipped and garnished,
and my arms are as husky and strong as a boy's and my nose badly
sunburned from my strenuosity with hoe and trimming scissors.

All of which I have done and done well. But when I think of all those
five girls that are waiting for me to solve the emotional formula by
which they can work out and establish the fact that man equals woman, I
get weak in the knees.

Jane's letters are just prods.

* * * * *

Your highly cultivated artistic nature ought to be a very beautiful
revelation to the spiritual character of the young Methodist divine you
wrote me of in your last letter. Encourage him in every way with
affectionate interest in his work, especially in the Epworth League on
his country circuit. I am enclosing fifty dollars' subscription to the
work and I hope you will give as much You have not mentioned Mr. Hayes
for several letters. I fear you are prejudiced against him. Seek to know
and weigh his character before you judge him as unfit for your love.

* * * * *

The highly spiritual Mr. Haley glared at Polk for an hour out here on my
porch, when he interrupted us in one of our Epworth League talks, in
such an unspiritual manner that Polk said he felt as if he had been
introduced to the Apostle Paul while he was still Saul of Tarsus. I had
to pet the Dominie decorously for a week before he regained his benign
manner. Of course, however, it was trying to even a highly spiritual
nature like his to have Polk insist on pinning a rose in my hair right
before his eyes.

About Polk I feel that I am in the midst of one of those great calm,
oily stretches of ocean that a ship is rocked gently in for a few hours
before the storm tosses it first to Heaven and then to hell. He is so
psychic, and in a way attuned to me, that he partly understands my
purpose in declaring my love for him to put him at a disadvantage in his
love-making to me, and he hasn't let me do it yet, while his tacit suit
goes on. It is a drawn battle between us and is going to be fought to
the death. In the meantime Nell--

And while I was on the porch sitting with Richard Hal