gine she was much of anybody before she was
married; and out here it's all hail fellow and well met, they say, though
in that case I don't see--Well, well, it's no matter, only it seems queer
to me; and I think you'd better drop a hint about it when you're there,
and just explain that my daughter lives next door to the
Lieutenant-Governor when she is in the country, and opposite the
Assistant-Bishop in town, and has one of the Harvard Overseers for a near
neighbor, and is distantly related to the Reveres! You'd think even a
South Framingham girl must know about the lantern and the Old South, and
how much they've always been respected at home."

Clover pacified her as well as she could, by assurances that it was not a
dinner-party, and they were only asked to meet one girl whom Mrs. Hope
wanted her to know.

"If it were a large affair, I am sure you would have been asked too," she
said, and so left her "old woman of the sea" partly consoled.

It was the most lovely evening possible, as Clover and Phil walked down
the street toward Dr. Hope's. Soft shadows lay over the lower spurs of the
ranges. The canyons looked black and deep, but the peaks still glittered
in rosy light. The mesa was in shadow, but the nearer plain lay in full
sunshine, hot and yellow, and the west wind was full of mountain
fragrance.

Phil gave little skips as he went along. Already he seemed like a
different boy. All the droop and languor had gone, and given place to an
exhilaration which half frightened Clover, who had constant trouble in
keeping him from doing things which she knew to be imprudent. Dr. Hope had
warned her that invalids often harmed themselves by over-exertion under
the first stimulus of the high air.

"Why, how queer!" she exclaimed, stopping suddenly before one of the
pretty places just above Mrs. Marsh's boarding-house.

"What?"

"Don't you see? That yard! When we came by here yesterday it was all green
grass and rose-bushes, and girls were playing croquet; and now, look, it's
a pond!"

Sure enough! There were the rose-bushes still, and the croquet arches; but
they were standing, so to speak, up to their knees in pools of water,
which seemed several inches deep, and covered the whole place, with the
exception of the flagged walks which ran from the gates to the front and
side doors of the house. Clover noticed now, for the first time, that
these walks were several inches higher than the grass-beds on either side.
She wo