walk.

"But, as it chances, you have collected many of the volumes that are
necessary to me, and I will use them freely, for some day, friend of
mine, my books will be joined to yours, and also feel the touch of little
Richard's and Ian's fingers, and of their sons, also, I hope.

"I declare, I'm growing childishly expectant and impatient for spring,
like Barbara with her packages of flower seeds.

"You ask if I ever remember meeting one Lavinia Dorman. I think I used to
see her with a bevy of girls from Miss Black's school, who used sometimes
to attend lectures at the Historical Society rooms, and had an unlimited
appetite for the chocolate and sandwiches that were served below in the
'tombs' afterward, which appetite I may have helped to appease, for you
know father was always a sort of mine host at those functions.

"The girls must have all been eight or ten years my junior, and you know
how a fellow of twenty-three or four regards giggling schoolgirls--they
seem quite like kittens to him.

"Stop, was she one of the older girls, the special friend of--Barbara's
mother? If so, I remember her face, though she did not walk in the school
procession with the other 'convicts,' as the boys called them; but I was
never presented.

"I'm sending a small birthday token to the boys--a little printing-press.
Richard showed no small skill in setting the letters of my rubber stamp.
It is some days late, but that will separate it from the glut of the
Christmas market. Ask Evan to notify me if he and Barbara go to town.

"Gratefully,

"M. C."

IV

WHEN BARBARA GOES TO TOWN

_March_ 4. I like to go to a plain people's play, where the spectators
groan and hiss the villain. It is a wholesome sort of clearing house
where one may be freed from pent-up emotion under cover of other people's
tears and smiles; the smiles triumphing at the end, which always winds up
with a sudden recoil, leaving the nerves in a healthy thrill. I believe
that I can only comprehend the primal emotions and what is called in
intellectual jargon mental dissipation, and the problem play, in its many
phases, appeals to me even less than crude physical dissipation.

We have seen a drama of the people played quite recently, having been to
New York to spend part of a "midwinter" week's vacation, which father
insisted that Evan should take between two rather complex and
eye-straining pieces of work. Speaking by the almanac, it wasn't
midwinter at