hich he broke suddenly with
the trenchant remark--"Barbara, I think your dwess would be prettier if
it was weeded some!"

All of which is of course perfectly true. I have not been growing
thinner all these six years, but this morning, in stooping over one of
the cold frames to see how the plants within had weathered the storm, it
came quite as a shock to me to feel that, like Martin Cortright, I am
getting stout and in the way of myself when I bend, like an impediment
in a door hinge.

However, as Miss Lavinia desired guidance in buying some real country
clothes, I felt it my duty to give it. She is already making elaborate
preparations for her visit to me. It seems strange, that simplicity is
apparently one of the most laborious things in the world to those
unaccustomed to it, yet so it is.

She is about to make her initial venture in shirtwaists, and she
approaches them with as much caution as if she were experimenting with
tights and trunks. The poor little seamstress who is officiating has, to
my certain knowledge, tried one waist on five times, because, as Miss
Lavinia does not "feel it," she thinks it cannot fit properly.

Never mind, she will get over all that, of course. The plan that she has
formed of spending five or six months in the real country must appear
somewhat in the light of a revolution to her, and the preparation of a
special uniform and munitions for the campaign a necessary precaution.
Her present plan is to come to me for May, then, if the life suits her,
she will either take a small house that one of our farmer neighbours
often rents for the summer months, or else, together with her maid, Lucy,
board at one of the hill farms.

I have told her plainly (for what is friendship worth if one may not be
frank) that if after trial we agree with each other, I hope she will
stay with us all the season; but as for her maid, I myself will supply
her place, if need be, and Effie do her mending, for I could not have
Lucy come.

Perhaps it may be very narrow and provincial, but to harbour other
people's servants seems to me like inviting contagion and subjecting
one's kitchen to all the evils of boarding house atmosphere.

I used to think last summer, when I saw the arrival of various men and
maids belonging to guests of the Bluff Colony, that I should feel much
more at ease in the presence of royalty, and that I could probably
entertain Queen Alexandra at dinner with less shock to her nerves and
tra