the perversity of such communities, many declared that Miss Rose
was more talented than Miss Nan, and that she could have written much
better things than her sister if she had chosen. But what could have
been more ridiculous than any attempt to arouse rivalry between sisters
who dwelt together so contentedly, and who were the busiest and happiest
women in town!

The Bartlett girls were the best friends the college boys had. If one of
these ladies undertook, in the absence of a manservant, to drive the
mower across their fifty feet of lawn, some youngster invariably
appeared to relieve her of this task. Or if wood or coal were observed
lying upon the walk in front of the Bartlett gate, it was always a
question whether the Sigma Chis or the Phi Gamma Deltas would see the
fuel first and hasten to conceal anything so monstrous, so revolting to
the soul of young Greeks, in the Bartlett cellar. Amid all their
vocations and avocations, the Bartletts moved tranquilly in an
atmosphere of luxurious leisure. They were never flustered; their
employments were a kind of lark, it seemed, never to be referred to
except in the most jocular fashion. When Rose had entrusted to the oven
a wedding-cake or a pan of jumbles she would repair to the piano for a
ten-minute indulgence in Chopin. Similarly indifferent to fate, Nan at
intervals in the day drew a tablet and fountain-pen from her
sewing-table and recorded some whimsicality which she had seemingly
found embedded in the mesh of a shopping-bag she was embellishing. And
when, in due course, a funny-looking, canary-colored envelope carried
this fragment to the desk of some bored phlegmatic editor, he would, as
like as not, grin and scribble an order to the cashier for two dollars
(or some such munificent sum) and pin it to the stamped "return" canary
envelope, which would presently reach Number 98 Buckeye Lane,
Montgomery, Indiana.

Phil Kirkwood hardly remembered a time when Number 98 had not been a
safe port in the multitudinous squalls that beset her youth. The
Bartletts were wholly human, as witness their pantry and
garret--veritable magazines of surprises! Miss Rose was a marvel at
cutting out silhouettes; Miss Nan would, with the slightest provocation,
play bear or horse, crawling over the floor with Phil perched on her
back blowing a horn. It was no wonder that Phil's vagrant steps turned
instinctively toward Number 98. In the beginning her father used to seek
her there; and hav