Something in this talk reminded me of the far-off childish days when Susie and I made our play-houses under the old butternut tree, and gathered in our stores of chestnuts and walnuts and laid our grave plans for life as innocently as two squirrels, and I laughed with a tear in my eye. I recounted to her the little idyl, and said that it had been a foreshadowing of her, and that perhaps my child angel had guided me to her.
"Some day you shall take me up there, Harry, and show me where you and she played together, and we will gather strawberries and lilies and hear the bobolinks," she said. "How little the world knows how cheap happiness is!"
"To those that know where to look for it," said I.
"I heard papa telling you that half the estates on which good New England families live in comfort up there in the country don't amount to more than five thousand dollars, yet they live well, and they have all those lovely things around them free. Here in this artificial city life people struggle and suffer to get money for things they don't want and don't need. Nobody wants these great parties, with their candy pyramids and their artificial flowers and their rush and crush that tire one to death, and yet they pay as much for one as would keep one of those country houses going for a year. I do wish we could live there!"
"I do too—with all my heart, but my work must lie here. We must make what the French call an Interior here in New York. I shall have to be within call of printers and the slave of printers' devils, but in summer we will go up into the mountains and stay with my mother, and have it all to ourselves."
"Do you know, Harry," said Eva after a pause, "I can see that Sophie Elmore really does admire Sydney. I can't help wondering how one can, but I see she does. Now don't you hope she'll get engaged to him?"
"Certainly I do," said I, "I wan't all nice people to be engaged if they have as good a time as we do. It's my solution of the woman question."
"Well, do you know I managed my last interview with Sydney with reference to that? I made what you would call a split-shot in croquet to send him from me and to her."
"How did you do it?"
"Oh, don't ask me to describe. There are ways of managing these men that are incommunicable. One can play on them as upon a piano, and I'll wager you a pair of gloves that Sydney goes off after Sophie. She's too good for him, but she likes him, and Sophie will make him a nice wife. But only think of poor Aunt Maria! It will be the last stroke that breaks the camel's back to have the Elmores get Sydney."