get to some place by myself and think. There was no earthly reason
for it but I felt like an animal that has been hurt and wants to go off
and lick its wounds. A womanly woman that lives a lovely appealing life
right in a man's own home has a perfect right to gain his love,
especially if she is beautifully unconscious of her appeal. Besides, why
should a man want to take an independent, explosive, impudent firebrand
with all sorts of dreadful plots in her mind to his heart? He wouldn't
and doesn't!

There is no better sedative for a woman's disturbed and wounded emotions
than a little stiff brain work. Richard's letter braced my viny drooping
of mind at once and from thinking into the Crag's affairs of sentiment,
I turned with masculine vigor to begin to mix into his affairs of
finance. However, I wish that the first big business letter I ever got
in my life hadn't had to have a strain of love interest running through
it! Still Dickie is a trump card in the man pack.

It seems that as his father is one of the most influential directors
and largest stockholders in this new branch of the Cincinnati and Gulf
railroad he has got the commission for making the plans for all the
stations along the road, and he wants to give me the commission for
drawing all the gardens for all the station-yards. It will be tremendous
for both of us so young in life, and I never dared hope for such a
thing. I had only hoped to get a few private gardens of some of my
friends to laze and pose over, but this is startling. My mind is
beginning to work on in terms of hedges and fountains already and Dickie
may be coming South any minute.

And besides the hedges and gravel paths I have a feeling that Dickie's
father and the Crag and Sallie's girl-babies are fomenting around in my
mind getting ready to pop the cork of an idea soon. The combination
feels like some kind of a hunch--I sat still for a long time and let it
seethe, while I took stock of the situation.

There is a strange, mysterious kind of peace that begins to creep across
the Harpeth Valley, just as soon as the sun sinks low enough to throw
the red glow over the head of Old Harpeth. I suppose it happens in other
hill-rimmed valleys in other parts of the Universe, but it does seem as
if God himself is looking down to brood over us, and that the valley is
the hollow of His hand into which he is gathering us to rest in the
darkness of His night. I felt buffeted and in need of Him as I sa