y the opulent kin of those
sturdy, dark-eyed Russian violets of my mother's garden, and as they mean
more than any other flower to me, Evan always brings them to me when I
come to town. This morning he trudged out in the snow, hardly thinking
this man would have any, but by mere chance the grower, suspecting snow,
brought in his crop the night before, and in spite of the storm I had the
first morning breath of these flowers of a day.

Miss Lavinia sniffed and sighed, and then buried her aristocratic, but
rather chilly, nose in the mass. "I feel like a young girl with her first
bouquet," she said presently.

"Ah, how good it is to be given something with a meaning. Most people
think that to be able to buy what they wish, within reason, is perfect
happiness, but it isn't. Barbara, you and this man of yours quite
unsettle me and shake my pet theories. You show sides of things in my own
birthplace that I never dreamed of looking up, and you convince me, when
I am on the wane, that married friendship is the only thing worth living
for. It's too bad of you, but fortunately for me the notion passes off
after you have gone away," and Miss Lavinia, after loving her violets a
bit longer, put them in a chubby jug of richly chased old silver. After
breakfast we tried to coax her to bundle up and come with us to
Washington Square to see the crystal trees in all their beauty; but that
was too unorthodox a feat. To plough through snow in rubber boots in the
very heart of the city was entirely too radical a move. She knew people
about the square, and I suppose did not wish to be seen by them, so she
was obliged to content herself with sight of the snow draperies and ice
jewels that decked the trees and shrubs of the doomed back yard.

Even though the storm called a halt in our plans for Miss Lavinia,
Evan and I had a little errand of our own, our annual pilgrimage to
see the auction room where we first met that February afternoon. The
room is not there now, to be sure, but we go to see it all the same,
and have our little thrill and buy something near the place to take
home to the boys, and we shall continue to come each year unless
public improvement causes the thoroughfare itself to be hung up in the
sky, which is quite possible.

Then Evan went down town, and I returned to lunch with Miss Lavinia, for,
if possible, we were to call on Sylvia Latham and ask her to dinner on
the morrow, the last day of our stay. Miss Lavinia propos