our, but
_Five hundred and Eighty-two Van Diemen's Avenue_ is horrible!" We had
given in to Miss Fraenkel of course, save that none of us had the
courage to disillusion Bill's cousin. We still received from him letters
addressed in his sprawling painter's hand "_Wigboro' House, Netley
Heights, N. J., U. S. A._," a mail or so late. We never told him of _Van
Diemen's Avenue_, nor for that matter had we mentioned our neighbours.
Curiously enough, it was he, that painter cousin of Bill's, thousands of
miles away in that other Essex, who told _us_ something that we were
only too quick to appreciate, about our neighbours.

We were talking of him, I remember, that afternoon as we sat on the
stoop, Bill saying he would be writing soon, and Mac raising the vexed
question of the Fourth Chair. You see, we have four rocking-chairs on
our verandah, though there are but three of us, and Bill usually claims
the hammock. It was no answer, I found, to suggest future friends as
occupants for this chair. It grew to be a legend that some day I should
bring home a bride and she should have it. I submitted to this badinage
and even hinted that at first we should need but one chair.... I had
heard ... nay seen, such things in San Francisco, before the earthquake.
In the meantime I had vamped up a very pretty story of the
painter-cousin getting a commission to paint a _prima-donna_ in New York
and coming over to visit us in great state. He might be induced to sit
awhile in the vacant chair. It seemed more probable than Bill's legend,
for I knew Miss F----, anybody I married, say, would want the hammock.
There was one drawback to my dream, and that was the humiliation of
revealing to him Van Diemen's Avenue. He is a university man, and from
his letters and Bill's description I should say he has a rather
embarrassing laugh when he finds a person out in a deception like that.
But so far he had not yet received a commission to paint a _prima-donna_
in New York, and he still pictures our Wigboro' house standing alone on
Netley Heights, looking out across rolling country to the sea. Of course
the photos that we send do not show any other houses near, and the
verandahs make the place look bigger than it really is. He must be
tremendously impressed, too, by Bill's courageous declaration (in
inverted commas) that at the back the land is ours "as far as the eye
can see." It is true, too, though the eye cannot see very far. There is
a "dip," you know, co