ng without you. You are absolutely necessary
to us. Who, I ask you, would do up my white waistcoat and duck
trousers if _you_ left?"

Mary beamed at this seductive flattery, and bridled visibly.

"Tell me all about it, Boss dear," she said.

And in so doing she and we both forgot that she had suggested going,
and nothing more was ever said about it.

Seldom can I look back, however, and recall an instance when we
obtained more feverish and thrilling joy than from those next few days
when we mentally improved and furnished Peach Orchard.

With what excitement did we lay rugs and place furniture in our mind's
eye! How we appealed frantically to each other to decide whether there
were three or four windows in the library, and with what complacency
did we discover that, owing to a shrewd forethought of my own in
furnishing the smoking and living rooms in our apartment with similar
curtains, we now had enough for the great, light, airy sitting-room at
Peach Orchard.

Then we took a long breath and fell with fresh avidity into the subject
of improvements. Mr. Close was of the opinion that Susan would do
nothing--could do nothing rather, as she had a consumptive brother who
must live in the Adirondacks, and her resources were few. Therefore,
we recklessly decided that if she would give us an option on the place
for another year, we would make the improvements ourselves. Fools!

Yet why fools! Never have we so enjoyed spending money, and as Anthony
Hope says that "economy is going without something you want, for fear
that sometime you'll want something which probably you won't want," we
felt upheld and strengthened in the knowledge that we were never, by
any means, economical.

But the Angel was prospering. Those who frankly predicted that we
would starve or be divorced were now glad to sit at our well-set table
and smoke the Angel's good cigars and sip his excellent wines. And
feeling that we might branch out a _little_, we promptly branched out a
great deal, and nearly went to smash in consequence.

But God watches over children and fools, and we were saved, and sped
upon our way in a manner so like a special dispensation of Providence
that no lesson was learned to teach us to be more careful next time.
In fact, it encouraged us in our recklessness, for in our darkest hour
the Angel's first play was accepted, and, being staged, was so
instantaneously a success that he gave up novels altogether and began
to