and a stained marble basin at the center. There are shade-trees and
date-palms and shrubs and Romanesque-looking stone seats about narrow
walks, for this is the only really formalized portion of the entire
property. This leads off into a grove and garden, a confusion of
flowers and trees where I've already been able to spot out a number of
orange trees, some of them well fruited, several lemon and fig trees,
a row of banana trees, or plants, whichever they should be called,
besides pepper and palm and acacia and a long-legged double-file of
eucalyptus at the rear. And in between is a pergola and a mixture of
mimosa and wistaria and tamarisk and poppies and trellised roses and
one woody old geranium with a stalk like a crab-apple trunk and growth
enough to cover half a dozen prairie hay-stacks.

But, as I've already implied, it was the inside of the house that
astonished me. It is much bigger than it looks and is crowded with the
most gorgeous old things in copper and brass and leather and mahogany
that I ever saw under one roof. It has three open fireplaces, a huge
one of stone in the huge living-room, and rough-beamed ceilings of
redwood, and Spanish tiled floors, and chairs upholstered with cowhide
with the ranch-brand still showing in the tanned leather, and tables
of Mexican mahogany set in redwood frames, and several convenient
little electric heaters which can be carried from room to room as they
are needed.

Pinshaw, Peter's gardener and care-taker, had before our arrival
picked several clumps of violets, with perfume like the English
violets, and the house was aired and everything waiting and ready when
we came, even to two bottles of certified milk in the icebox for the
babies and half a dozen Casaba melons for their elders. My one
disturbing thought is that it will be a hard house to live up to. But
Struthers, who is not untouched with her _folie de grandeur_, has the
slightly flurried satisfaction of an exile who has at last come into
her own. One of the first things I must do, however, is to teach my
kiddies to respect Peter's belongings. In one cabinet of books, which
is locked, I have noticed several which are by "Peter Ketley" himself.
Yet that name meant nothing to me, when I met it out on the prairie
and humiliated its owner by converting him into one of my hired hands.
_Ce monde est plein de fous._

_Monday the Sixteenth_

This is a great climate for meditation. An