mber and March, these being the
months (as I afterward learned) in which the semi-annual interest, so
called, fell due.

As you may suppose, while Alice and I, under the direction of Mr.
Denslow, were worrying ourselves nearly to death over the miserable
details of "closing" this transaction, our neighbors and Adah (Alice's
sister) busied themselves with planning improvements in and for our new
home. It was during this period that Adah met with one of those
sorrows which benumb the sensitive feminine heart. In a moment of
vandalism ever to be deprecated, little Erasmus discovered and took
possession of that copy of "The National Architect" which contained the
picture of the plutocratic villa at Narragansett Pier. This precious
relic was put by the heedless boy to the base use of serving as a tail
to a kite, and during one of the high winds the kite blew away, and
there was an end to Adah's most precious possession! Thus perished the
link that united Adah to the sweetest dream of her maturer years.

However, this mishap did not wholly abate Adah's interest in our
affairs. In answer to Adah's solicitation a long letter had come from
Maria, bearing the blissful promise that a carefully made plan of
Maria's house of St. Joe (drawn by Maria herself upon a fly leaf
excerpted from Maria's favorite volume, "The Life of Mary Lyon") would
soon be forwarded for our enlightenment and delectation. Maria felt
kindly toward us, and her sympathies had been awakened to their very
depths by a tender souvenir Adah had sent her--a leaf plucked from one
of the lilac bushes on the old Schmittheimer place. Both Adah and
Maria belong to that old-school class of proper feminine folk who never
pick but always pluck flowers.

Well, Adah and the neighbors kept as busy as a bee in a bottle planning
changes that they deemed necessary in our house. When we got through
with that dilly-dallying, shilly-shallying Lawyer Meisterbaum, Alice
and I found out that Adah and the neighbors had left little for us to
do except to approve their plans and pay for the execution thereof.

There had been a kind of tacit understanding all along that such
changes as we made in the Schmittheimer house should be superintended
by an architect-carpenter who was cordially recommended by Mrs.
Denslow. This important person's name was Silas Plum, and he had a
shop in Osgood Avenue, opposite one of our most fashionable and most
prosperous cemeteries. Mrs. Denslow