for your sake, but I do not think I can. I am so lonely! I feel like an atom floating in space.”  

 “Isobel!” I said kindly but reprovingly. “With the Millingtons on one side and the Rolfs on the other?”  

 “I know,” she admitted contritely enough; “but you can't understand. Always and always, since I was born, some one has lived overhead, and some one has lived underneath. Sometimes only the janitor lived underneath—”  

 “Isobel,” I said, “if you will try to explain what you mean—”  

 “I mean flats,” she said dolefully. “I always lived in a flat, John, and there was always a family above and a family below, and it frightens me to think I am in a house where there is no family above me, and not even a janitor's family below me. It makes me feel naked, or suspended in air, or as if there was no ground under my feet. It makes me gasp!”  

 “That is nonsense!” I said. “That is the beauty of having a house. We have it all to ourselves. Now, in a flat—”  

 “We had our flat all to ourselves, John,” she reminded me; “but a flat isn't so unbounded as a house. Just think; there is nothing between us and the top of the sky! Not a single family! It makes me nervous. And there is nothing beneath us!”  

 “Now, my dear,” I said soothingly, “China is beneath us, and no doubt a very respectable family is keeping house directly below.”  

 Isobel sighed contentedly. 

 “I am so glad you thought of that!” she cried. “Now, when I feel lonely, I can imagine I feel the house jar as the Chinese family move their piano, or I can imagine that I hear their phonograph.”  

 “Very good,” I said; “and if you can imagine all that, why cannot you imagine a family overhead, too? The whole attic is there. Very well; I give up the entire attic to your imagination.”  

 Then I kissed her and went into the back garden. My opinion is that the man that laid out that back garden was over-sanguine. I am passionately fond of gardening, and believe in back gardens; but at the present price of seed and the present hardness of hoe handles, I think that back garden is too large. This is not a mere flash opinion, either; it is a matter of study. The first day I stuck spade into that garden I had given little thought to its size, but by the time I had spaded all day I began to have a 

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