iterranean, and the shores of France. In that fair land, while the
world was still at peace, we wandered for more than a year, resting
where we chose, as long as we chose, all the more unhurried and happy
for not knowing that we were seeing the end of the Golden Age. Oh, those
lovely days when we went gipsying along the roads of Provence and
Picardy and Touraine! I cannot write of them now, for in to-day's shock
of battle they have already become unreal and dreamlike. I touch them
and the bloom vanishes. But sometimes when I do not try to write, and
only lean back and close my eyes, I can catch again a little of their
breath and sweetness; I can see the purpling vineyards and the poppied
fields; I can drift once more with Elizabeth and our girls through the
wonderland of France.

[Illustration: _It was on a winter evening that I drove our car back to
its old place in the barn, after its long journeyings by land and sea_]

War came and brought the ruin of the world. It was late in the year when
we returned to America, and it was on a winter evening that I drove our
car back to its old place in the barn, after its long journeyings by
land and sea. Our old house had remained faithful. A fire roaring up the
chimney made it home.

We went to Westbury's, however, for the holidays. Westbury with the
years had become a prosperous contractor, for Brook Ridge was no longer
an abandoned land, but a place of new and beautiful homes. Westbury's
prosperity, however, had not made him proud--not too proud to offer us
old-time Christmas hospitality at his glowing fireside.

V

_Was it the spirit of our garden?_

Summer found us back in the old house, almost as if we had not left it.
Almost, but not quite. Somehow the world had changed. Perhaps it was
just the war--perhaps it was because we were all older--our girls
beginning to have lives of their own--because the family unit was
getting ready to dissolve.

The dissolving began at last one sunny June day when the Pride left us.
It was the young man whom I had noticed around the house a year or two
before who took her away. She seemed to prefer to go with him than to
stay with us, I could not exactly make out why, but I did not think it
best, or safe, to argue the question, and I drove them to the train
afterward.

Then the Hope and the Joy got the notion of spending their summers in
one of those camps that are so much the fashion now, and at last there
came a day that the Ho