Show their pleasant summer IL A where asked the caller in con polite tones and with lukewarm interest are you going for or the summer the effect on her hostess was elec she sat bolt upright dropped the teapot with a bang and echoed going we were re not going we re stay estaY ing my goodness gasped the caller excuse me for mentioning it if it its a a tender subject its not tender said her hostess energetically its it s worse its it a an impossible subject we went away 1 last t summer r a and n d th that t a t the h e rea reason s 0 u the balse bunni mei Is s announced a n u cu nee d t that h at t they h e r were going to europe and said that if we d occupy their big place across the lake tor for the season and see that the servants t fight and that the cows didn dian t eat up the garden wed we d make them our debtors for life v we stored our furniture when the lease expired in may and rushed headlong to our doom we thought it was a paradise on earth toward which we were flying and maybe it would have been it if the cook and the maid and the man of all work at the place decided that since their real family was gone this would be a nice time to run home to the old country for a visit and they went two days after we came they looked us over in a cold and critical way and disapproved of us and departed we got lots of exercise before we found help tom used to rise at four and weed the gabaen and I 1 got up at the same time to feed the chickens turn on the automatic pump get breakfast and superintend tom a milking he lie was kicked through the barn door only twice and we consid ered that the record was pretty good for a greenhorn he ile had some minor mishaps like poking back all the beans when they came up pushing the seed ahead of them and training the potato vines up on strings instead of the peas but trouble dida t really start until later one day we were sitting in the flower garden having lunch and I 1 told dotty aged four to go indoors for something we watched her dis appear into the bouse house and then tom said could anything be more peace ful or inspiring than this perfect dayl and I 1 responded in similar blank verse just then the neighbor whose cottage was on oil the lake shore came tearing around the corner ot of our house she stared at us as though we au noyed her arent you folks in bath ing she inquired well somebody Is out in front and I 1 thought tom and I 1 did a foot race to the water unconscious and black in the lake and he fished dotty out of the face that child bad had marched in at the back door of the house and as promptly marched out through the front door and proceeded to take a paddle by herself in the lake inspired by some unaccountable juvenile im pulse dotty came out of her trance in two hours but during that time I 1 got ten gray hairs and tom s nervous tern tem was permanently shattered it was a couple of weeks later that dotty and tom jr remarked that their throats were sore and the doctor pronounced it black diphtheria he lie murmured something about defective drains alre was a blur of trained nurses and horrors for a time and then the smoke of battle cleared away meanwhile the cows had eaten that part of the garden that had not dried up for lack of attention and the chick ens were laying eggs all over the county the Tun nills never did get them back they d send us postcards from eu rope saying we saw this today hope you are enjoying life at the dear old home this while I 1 was burning fumigating candles or we came down this river today how you must be enjoying the garden green things that came the day the cows ate the last of the green corn we had ex pecked to use ourselves A little while later tom dropped a flatiron on hia his toe and blood poison ing set in then the Tun nills sent a lovely card saying we ne can just fin agine you doing the five mile walk through elm lane and the woods we envy you this was while we were changing the bandages on his smashed and painful toot foot six times a day the worst of all was that the family sent tom toms s pretty and harum sister nell to us so that she shed d forget the ineligible man she was try ing to get engaged to I 1 produced all the young men at the hotel and sev eral village lights to distract her and so perfectly did I 1 succeed that ehe she eloped with a college boy who was running a launch to pay his summer expenses As the family was saving up a millionaire tor for nell when she a it 0 should have come to her senses they still feel hard toward me and say I 1 should have bad had more sense when we came back to town in the fall all the good flats were taken and the moths had got into our rugs and I 1 had lost fifteen pounds and all my color and tom was a dyspeptic old grouch its it a taken all wlater to get dotty and tom jaw J cf civilized again and on the whole we ve concluded that the family will be better oft off it if it denies itself the strain of a summer here herel vacation were going to stick rights it does sound safer admitted the taller |