“You may care to know that I have been much surprised of late to receive two calls, here at home, from Mr. Ferry.  One was in March, but I didn’t mention it, for I thought probably it was the first, last, and only one he would ever make, and I wouldn’t crow about it.  It was on one of mother’s Thursdays, and of course a lot of other people were here.  I was busy with the tea things, so couldn’t give him much attention.  He was very nice, and everybody seemed much interested to see him here.  When he went away he came over and said to me that he should like to come again when we were not “At Home,” only at home!  Of course I said he might, and mother asked him specially, too.  So just yesterday evening—­it was Tuesday—­he came again.  Mother was out until just before he went.  We had a delightful time in the library over a box of new books Jarvis had just had sent up—­not farm books, this time.  Mr. Ferry found something which specially pleased him, and read several pages to me—­sitting on the edge of the library table—­I mean that he was sitting on the edge of it—­not I!  I was most properly disposed in a chair—­and congratulating myself that I had on a little new home frock of dull green with bands of blue and gold embroidery that had just come home—­the most becoming thing Celeste has ever made me.  I think he had a good time—­anyhow, he stayed much longer than he need have done if he didn’t—­I meant that if he wasn’t having a good time!—­I don’t seem to be able to write lucidly.  We talked much of you, and of how good it would seem to have you back, and of the garden, and the coming summer.  He wanted to know if mother and I were coming out to spend the season again, and I said yes.  He asked if I didn’t think we ought to be there by the latter part of April, so as to welcome you when you come the first of May.  It seemed rather a good idea to me—­what do you think of it?  Mother has set the fifteenth, but I really do want to see the first spring things coming up.  Jarvis brought home a great bunch of daffodils yesterday.  I wanted to send them on to you, but he thought they wouldn’t last out the journey.”

The thought of the daffodils made Sally long intensely for her garden.  There was a long row of them at the farther end, and another clump at the edge of the lawn, with stray ones here and there through the grass which she had not been willing to have removed.  She thought about them many times until the arrival of the next letter, on the eleventh, which was from Joanna, and which turned her thoughts into housewifely channels.

“Dear Miss,” it began, in a cramped hand upon a large sheet of ruled paper.  “I suppose you would like to know what has been done about the house cleaning.  You wrote me to wate till you come, but I never like to wate later than March, and so I did what was nesessary myself, peice by peice, as I could find time.  Mr. Max and Mr. Alec and Mr. Bob seemed to think the house didn’t need cleaning, but Mr. Jarvis being used to my ways and