s, the wood-starring dogwood, the voice of
bluebird--even so gross a reminder as the farewell handshake of the
retiring buckwheat and oyster before they can welcome the Lady in
Green to their dull bosoms. But to old earth's choicest kin there come
straight, sweet messages from his newest bride, telling them they shall
be no stepchildren unless they choose to be.

On the previous summer Sarah had gone into the country and loved a
farmer.

(In writing your story never hark back thus. It is bad art, and cripples
interest. Let it march, march.)

Sarah stayed two weeks at Sunnybrook Farm. There she learned to love old
Farmer Franklin's son Walter. Farmers have been loved and wedded and
turned out to grass in less time. But young Walter Franklin was a modern
agriculturist. He had a telephone in his cow house, and he could figure
up exactly what effect next year's Canada wheat crop would have on
potatoes planted in the dark of the moon.

It was in this shaded and raspberried lane that Walter had wooed and won
her. And together they had sat and woven a crown of dandelions for her
hair. He had immoderately praised the effect of the yellow blossoms
against her brown tresses; and she had left the chaplet there, and
walked back to the house swinging her straw sailor in her hands.

They were to marry in the spring--at the very first signs of spring,
Walter said. And Sarah came back to the city to pound her typewriter.

A knock at the door dispelled Sarah's visions of that happy day. A
waiter had brought the rough pencil draft of the Home Restaurant's next
day fare in old Schulenberg's angular hand.

Sarah sat down to her typewriter and slipped a card between the rollers.
She was a nimble worker. Generally in an hour and a half the twenty-one
menu cards were written and ready.

To-day there were more changes on the bill of fare than usual. The soups
were lighter; pork was eliminated from the entrees, figuring only with
Russian turnips among the roasts. The gracious spirit of spring pervaded
the entire menu. Lamb, that lately capered on the greening hillsides,
was becoming exploited with the sauce that commemorated its gambols. The
song of the oyster, though not silenced, was _dimuendo con amore_. The
frying-pan seemed to be held, inactive, behind the beneficent bars of
the broiler. The pie list swelled; the richer puddings had vanished;
the sausage, with his drapery wrapped about him, barely lingered in a
pleasant thanatopsi