omin' sun--comin' sky."

[Illustration]

AN ADVENTURE IN SOLITUDE

My windows were all wide open one lovely April day, the loveliest time
of all the year in Southern California, filling the house with the
sweetness of wistaria and orange blossoms, but also, truth compels me to
add, with so many noises of such excruciating kinds that I followed
Ulysses' well-known plan and then tried to find quiet for my siesta in
the back spare-room. The worst of this house is that it really has no
back--it has various fronts, like the war. The spinster next door but
one has a parrot--a cynical, tired parrot, but still fond of the sound
of his own voice. The lady across the street is raising Pekinese
puppies, who apparently bitterly regret being born outside of Pekin. She
puts them in baskets on the roof in the sun and lets them cry it out, in
that hard-hearted modern method applied to babies.

A sight-seeing car had paused while the gentleman with the megaphone
explained to a few late tourists the Arroyo Seco, that great river-bed
with only a trickle of water at the bottom, on whose brink our house
perches. At home two plumbers were playfully tossing bricks about our
courtyard in a half-hearted endeavor to find out why our cellar was
flooded. Hence the back bedroom. No amount of cotton wool in one's ears,
however, could camouflage a telephone bell.

"The Red Cross Executive Committee will meet at ten on Wednesday."

A short interval followed. "Will Mr. S---- make a 'four-minute' speech
on Friday at the Strand Theatre for the Liberty Bond Campaign?"

Another interval during which I began to feel drowsy. "Will Mr. S----
say a few words of appreciation and present a wrist watch to the Chapter
Secretary just starting for France?" etc. Just here I made a resolve.
Escape I would, for one week, to my lovely hill-top by the sea, and
leave J----, the two boys, the two dogs, the two white mice, the Red
Cross, the Red Star, Food Conservation and Liberty Bonds to manage
beautifully without me. I even had the reckless idea of trying to forget
that there was a war going on! I was furnished with a perfectly good
excuse; we had rented "The Smiling Hill-Top" for two months, and it must
be put in order. Hence my "Adventure in Solitude."

Everything is called an adventure nowadays, and to me it was a most
exciting one, as I had not gone forth independently for many years. One
chauffeur, one smiling Helen to clean house for the tenants and