the barmaids can never collect their thoughts while they are drawing ale, aunt Celia proceeds slowly.)

“For my part,” said I, with mock humility, “I am a docile person who never has any intentions of her own, but who yields herself sweetly to the intentions of other people in her immediate vicinity.”

“Are you?” asked Mr. Copley, taking out his pencil.

“Yes, I said so. What are you doing?”

“Merely taking note of your statement, that’s all.—Now, Miss Van Tyck, I have a plan to propose. I was here last summer with a couple of Harvard men, and we lodged at a farmhouse half a mile from the cathedral. If you will step into the coffee-room of the Shoulder of Mutton and Cauliflower for an hour, I’ll walk up to Farmer Hendry’s and see if they will take us in. I think we might be fairly comfortable.”

“Can aunt Celia have Apollinaris and black coffee after her morning bath?” I asked.

“I hope, Katharine,” said aunt Celia majestically,—“I hope that I can accommodate myself to circumstances. If Mr. Copley can secure lodgings for us, I shall be more than grateful.”

So here we are, all lodging together in an ideal English farmhouse. There is a thatched roof on one of the old buildings, and the dairy house is covered with ivy, and Farmer Hendry’s wife makes a real English courtesy, and there are herds of beautiful sleek Durham cattle, and the butter and cream and eggs and mutton are delicious; and I never, never want to go home any more. I want to live here forever, and wave the American flag on Washington’s birthday.

I am so happy that I feel as if something were going to spoil it all. Twenty years old to-day! I wish mamma were alive to wish me many happy returns.

Memoranda: Casual remark for breakfast table or perhaps for luncheon,—it is a trifle heavy for breakfast: “Since the sixteenth century and despite the work of Inigo Jones and the great Wren (not Jenny Wren—Christopher), architecture has had, in England especially, no legitimate development.”

HE

Durham, July 19

Durham

O child of fortune, thy name is J. Q. Copley! How did it happen to be election time? Why did the inns chance to be full? How did aunt Celia relax sufficiently to allow me to find her a 

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