and serious
look met his twinkling, bantering one for a moment. "No, dearest," she
said, as she took his arm and walked away. "You know that I don't. You
are my home."

* * * * *

The Ketchums went back to Fairfield, and spent the two years that
followed very happily and quite uneventfully in that simple round of
duties and pleasures which the foolish find so dull and the wise would
not exchange for any other. And not the least agreeable feature of this
life was what was known as "the English letters," although this really
included books, music, photographs, sketches, and a great variety of
things, from the J. pens that came for Mrs. Vane and the larding-needles
that housewifely Mabel had coveted that she might "set a proper fowl
before husband," up to packages of a disgraceful size and bulk addressed
to Mr. Ketchum in Sir Robert's hand. Sir Robert was a regular and
delightful correspondent; Miss Noel and Ethel were equally kind about
writing; Mrs. Sykes sent a very characteristic epistle or two to the
family after her return, and then let "silence like a poultice" come to
heal the blows she had inflicted.

"What do you hear from that idiotic young Ramsay?" "How is Ramsay
opening the American oyster?" "What of poor Mr. Ramsay?" "Is Mr. Ramsay
coming back to England?" were questions often asked by these
correspondents; and Mr. Ketchum was able to give some account of that
fascinating fortune-seeker.

Mr. Ramsay wrote to him occasionally, which was the more flattering
because he repeatedly said in these productions that he "hated doing a
letter most tremendously," and very truly remarked that "the worst of it
is that you've got to be thinking what to say, which is an awful bore,
and ten to one the pen is bad, and spelling takes a lot out of you if
you are not used to looking up the words." Whether, "not being a
literary chap," he would have written to Mr. Ketchum at all had not the
Ketchum and Brown properties marched and the two families been good
friends is one of those nice questions which it is hard to decide. His
letters were headed "Out in the Bush" at first, and were full of the
adventures and amusements that his novel surroundings afforded him. Then
came more sober epistles from "The Ranch," with a good deal in them
about "these dirty brutes of Mexicans and ignorant cowboys," the long,
dull days, the doubts that had begun to agitate him as to the
possibility of getting the mill