"Again, I repeat, I enjoyed myself on your ranch. I particularly enjoyed seeing Bee do the bucolic.
"Give the enclosed to Billy, and tell the old man to buy something with it to remember me by.
"And with kind remembrances to yourself and Aubrey, I am
"Your slave,
"JIMMIE."
CHAPTER XIII
THE BREAKING UP OF MARY
Prosperity disagrees with some people. But with Mary I have always thought it was jealousy.
As long as we had no one but her, and she practically ran the house and us, too, she was the same faithful, honest, sympathetic soul, who first won our young love at the Waldorf during our honeymoon, but after we came to Peach Orchard and needed old Amos for the horses, and a gardener, and two extra maids in the house, Mary's thrift took wings, and no Liande de Pougy or Otero could exceed her extravagance in ordering things she did not want, and never could use.
I noticed that the bills were becoming perfectly unbearable, and, never dreaming that our good, faithful Mary could be at fault,—she, who used to declare that she had walked ten blocks to find lettuce at eight cents a head instead of nine, and who never could be persuaded that her time at home was worth far more to me than that extra cent,—I spoke to the grocer and asked him what he meant by such prices.