ousekeeping box, and had a satisfactory conference with Anastasia.

"Hurrah for Liberty and outdoors! _It_ begins to-morrow. You may label
it Their Garden Vacation, and admit it to the records of The Garden,
You, and I, at your own risk and peril; but as you say that if you are
to boil down the practical part of your garden-boke experiences for the
benefit of Aunt Lavinia and me and I must send you my summer doings, I
shall take this way of accomplishing it, at intervals, the only regular
task, if gossiping to you can be so called, that I shall set myself this
summer.

"A new moon to-night. Will it prove a second honeymoon, think you, or
end in a total eclipse of our venture? I'm poppy sleepy!

"_May 23._ 10 A.M. (A postal.) Starting on vacation; stopped bedroom
clock and put away watches last night, and so overslept. It seems quite
easy to get away from Time! Please tell me what annuals I can plant as
late in the season as this, while we are locating the rose bed.

"MARY PENROSE."

V

ANNUALS--WORTHY AND UNWORTHY

THE MIDSUMMER GARDEN

_Oaklands, May 25._ A garden vacation! Fifty dollars to spend for roses!
What annuals may be planted now to tide you easily over the summer?
Really, Mary Penrose, the rush of your astonishing letter completely
took away my breath, and while I was recovering it by pacing up and down
the wild walk, and trying to decide whether I should answer your
questions first, and if I did which one, or ask you others instead,
Scotch fashion, about your unique summer plans, Evan came home a train
earlier than usual, with a pair of horticultural problems for which he
needed an immediate solution.

Last evening, in the working out of these schemes, we found that we were
really travelling on lines parallel with your needs, and so in due
course you shall have Evan's prescription and design for A Simple Rose
Garden (if it isn't simple enough, you can begin with half, as the
proportions will be the same), while I now send you my plans for an
inexpensive midsummer garden, which will be useful to you only as a part
of the whole chain, but for which Evan has a separate need.

Over at East Meadow, a suburb of Bridgeton that lies toward the shore
and is therefore attractive to summer people, a friend of Evan's has put
up a dozen tasteful, but inexpensive, Colonial cottages, and Evan has
planned the grounds that surround them, about an acre bein