really do not know when, how, or at what point you
are going to take up the old one again. And, in point of fact, you do
not regard this particular prospect with feelings of complete
satisfaction. You remember, with a troubled conscience, the long list of
social connections which you have found it too troublesome to keep up at
long range. I say you, for I am quite sure that Mrs. Modestus will
certify me that it was You and not She, who first declared that it was
practically impossible to keep on going to the Smith's dinners or the
Brown's receptions. You don't know this, my dear Modestus, but I assure
you that you may take it for granted. You remember also that your return
must carry with it the suggestion of the ignominy of defeat, and you
know exactly the tone of kindly contemptuous, mildly assumed superiority
with which your friends will welcome you back. And the approaching
severance of your newer ties troubles your mind in another way. Your new
friends do not try to dissuade you from going (they are too wise in a
suburban way for that), but they say, and show in a hundred ways, that
they are sorry to think of losing you. And this forbearance, so
different from what you have to expect at the other end of your moving,
reproaches and pains while it touches your heart. These people were all
strangers to you two years and a half ago; they are chance rather than
chosen companions. And yet, in this brief space of time--filled with
little neighborly offices, with faithful services and tender sympathies
in hours of sickness, and perhaps of death, with simple, informal
companionship--you have grown into a closer and heartier friendship with
them than you have ever known before, save with the one or two old
comrades with whose love your life is bound up. When you learned to
leave your broad house-door open to the summer airs, you opened,
unconsciously, another door; and these friends have entered in.

* * * * *

It is a sunny Saturday afternoon in early April, but not exactly an
April afternoon, rather one of those precocious days of delicious warmth
and full, summer-like sunshine, that come to remind us that May and June
are close behind the spring showers. You and Mrs. Modestus sit on the
top step of your front veranda, just as you sat there on such a day,
nearly three years ago. As on that day, you are talking of the future;
but you are in a very different frame of mind to-day. In a few shor