distinguished himself in his new work for
about a year. Then suddenly out of a clear sky came the astounding news
that he had left the firm,--actually resigned from Frothingham, Curtis,
and Frothingham!--and had gone up into the mountains, to manage a mine
for some unknown person named Boone! Mrs. Phelps shut her lips into a
severe line when she heard this news, and for several weeks she did not
write to Austin. But as months went by, and he seemed always well and
busy, and full of plans for a visit home, she forgave him, and wrote
him twice weekly again,--charming, motherly letters, in which newspaper
clippings and concert programmes likely to interest him were enclosed,
and amateur photographs,--snapshots of Cornelia in her furs, laughing
against a background of snowy Common, snapshots of Cornelia's children
with old Kelly in the motor-car, and of dear Taylor and Cornelia with
Sally Middleton on the yacht. Did Austin remember dear Sally? She had
grown so pretty and had so many admirers.

It was Cornelia who suggested, when the staggering news of Austin's
engagement came to Boston, that her mother should go to California,
stay at some "pretty, quiet farm-house near by," meet this Miss
Manzanita Boone, whoever she was, and quietly effect, as mothers and
sisters have hoped to effect since time began, a change of heart in
Austin.

And so she had arrived here, to find that there was no such thing in
the entire valley as the colonial farmhouse of her dreams, to find
that, far from estranging Austin from the Boone family, she must
actually be their guest while she stayed at Yerba Buena, to find that
her coming was interpreted by this infatuated pair to be a sign of her
entire sympathy with their plans. And added to all this, Austin was
different, noisier, bigger, younger than she remembered him: Manzanita
was worse than her worst fears, and the rancho, bounded only by the
far-distant mountain ridges, with its canyons, its river, its wooded
valleys and trackless ranges, struck actual terror to her homesick soul.

"Well, what do you think of her? Isn't she a darling?" demanded Austin,
when he and his mother were alone on the porch, just before dinner.

"She's very PRETTY, dear. She's not a college girl, of course?"

"College? Lord, no! Why, she wouldn't even go away to boarding-school."
Austin was evidently proud of her independent spirit. "She and her
brothers went to this little school over here at Eucalyptus, and I
gu