Part 4

They quickened their pace; Anne was conscious of an intense wish that Aunt Susan might be home. She wanted to see the inside of the white house, bungalow, it might almost be called, if one did not associate bungalows with stucco or stained shingles. This cottage was of white wood, with the regulation green blinds. There was an outside chimney of red bricks; a pathway of red bricks in the old herringbone pattern led up to the front door, with its shining brass knocker. A row of white foxgloves stood sentinel before the front of the house, on each side the entrance, their pointed spires coming well above the window-sills; before them the dark foliage of perennial lupins, tossing up a white spray of flowers, and then it seemed as if every old-fashioned flower of white, or with a white variety, ran riot down to a border of sweet alyssum. Above all the fragrance came the unmistakable sweetness of mignonette.

"Oh, Burt!" called Anne, "I do hope she's home. What a woman she must be, I can guess some things about her, just from the outside of her house. I hope she'll show me the inside of it."

Burt shook his head. "She'd have seen us before this and been out here," he suggested. "Come 'round to the back."

The back of the premises proved no less fascinating; there was the neatest of clothes-yards, a vegetable garden, and a small garage, after which Anne regarded the silent cottage with wistful eyes.

"Those beautiful, old-fashioned flowers, no petunias but the white frilled kind,--she's an artist--and has the wash done at home," she enumerated, "and runs her automobile herself, I am sure, for she's a practical person as well; if she were just a sentimental flower-lover, she'd have had something or other climbing up the house, and it spoils the woodwork."

"It's safe to say Aunt Susan's in California," said Burt, disregarding this. "No joke, Nan, she has a married daughter who has been trying to get her out there for years, and Aunt Susan's always threatening to go. Never thought she would, but we can soon find out; I know who'll have the key."

He left Anne and walked back to the house just passed, and presently reappeared with the key. "Here you are. Aunt Susan left it with Mrs. Brown, who is to look after the place, and to use her judgment about letting people in. Aunt Susan has only been gone two days, she went hurriedly at the last, and Mrs. Brown is to close the house for her, but she hasn't got 'round to it yet. Lucky for us, there'll be everything we need for lunch; I brought eggs--see?"

Laughing like a boy. Burt unlocked the back door, and then produced four eggs, from as many pockets. He laid them carefully down upon the kitchen table.

"Now, Nan, we can use anything in the kitchen or pantry, and Mrs. Brown has a blueberry pie in the oven which she'll give us, she'll bring it over when it's done.--Want to go over the house?--Give you my word it's all right, in fact Aunt Susan told Mrs. Brown she wished she could rent it, as is, if she only knew somebody who would love it--that was her word. You can love it until the afternoon train, can't you?"

If Anne heard, she made no reply, she was exploring.

Downstairs, a wide hall occupied a central third of the house; it was well lighted by the windows each side the front door, and by double doors of glass, which opened on to the back porch. On one side the hall were kitchen and pantry, nearly equal in size, and glistening with white paint, aluminum, and blue and white porcelain. With a hasty glance over these treasures, to which she was coming back, Anne stepped out into the hall again, and around to the front of the winding staircase, and entered what she knew at once for the "owner's bedroom." There were windows on two sides, as this was a front room, and each broad sill bore its own pot of ferns. The furniture here was all old-fashioned, of some dark wood that had been rubbed to a satin finish, the floor was of plain surface, with braided mats, and a blue and white counterpane provided the only bit of drapery in the room. Anne's bright head nodded with satisfaction. Here was character; to win Aunt Susan's respect would be no light task, her personal and intimate belongings showed an austere sense of values and an almost surgical cleanliness. Yet Aunt Susan could not be a martinet; her hall, furnished for other people, showed due regard for their comfort; the living room, which took the entire western side of the cottage, bore unmistakable signs of much occupancy, with wide and varied interests. A set of dark shelves, at the lower end, held china, and suggested that one might also eat at the refectory table, which was furnished as a desk and held a few books, many writing materials, and a foreign-looking lamp. There was also a piano, well littered with music, a sewing bag thrown down upon a cretonned window seat, and the generous fireplace was flanked by two huge baskets, one heaped with magazines, the other a perfectly round mound of yellow fur, which suddenly took form and life as a yellow tabby cat fastened hopeful topaz eyes upon them, blinked away a brief disappointment, and then yawned with ennui.

"His missie left him all alone," said Anne, bending to stroke the smooth head. "What's upstairs, Burt?"

"Go and look, I'll take your place with the Admiral until you come back," offered Burt, and at sound of his name the yellow cat jumped out and began rubbing against a convenient table leg. Anne found them in the same relative positions when she returned from her inspection of the upper floor.

"Your Aunt Susan must use it for sewing," she told Burt, dreamily. "With that big skylight--it could be a studio, couldn't it?"

"It is," Burt informed her. "Aunt Susan is an artist--with her needle. She gives, or gave, dressmaking lessons, in her idle moments. She gave up dressmaking, when she bought this house and settled here, but now she teaches the daughters of her old customers, they come out in automobiles every Wednesday, in winter. Saturday afternoons she has some of the young girls in the village, here,--without price--and without taste, too, some of them! And Nan, I hate to mention it, but--Aunt Susan is a pretty good cook, too!"

"Feed the brute!" quoted Nan, with a gay laugh. "Will the Admiral drink condensed milk?"

Mrs. Brown came over with her blueberry pie as Burt was summoned to luncheon. She surveyed the table, which Nan had laid in the kitchen, and then the Admiral, who was making his toilette in a thorough manner that suggested several courses, with outspoken approval.

"My, I wish Susan Winchester could pop in this minute. You found the prepared flour, and all--baked 'em on the griddle! Wa'n't that cute! I never did see an omelet like that except from Susan Winchester's own hands, and she learned from a Frenchwoman she used to sew with. Some folks can pick up every useful trick they see."

Turning to Burt, she continued:

"With all the new fangle-dangles of these days, women voting and all, you're a lucky boy to have found an old-fashioned girl!"

"I know it," said Burt, brazenly, but he did not meet Anne's astonished eyes. "My girl has learned the best of the new accomplishments, without losing what was worth keeping of the old."

Anne's judgment told her it was a good luncheon--no better than she served herself at home, though. She stared at her own slim, capable fingers. Was she domestic, after all?

"We've been looking at apartments in the city," Burt went on--"apartments in a hotel, you know.--Try the omelet, Mrs. Brown--Nan's don't fall flat as soon as other omelets do.--But we haven't found what really appeals to us."

"I should think not," declared Mrs. Brown, vigorously. "I always say a person hasn't a spark of originality that will go and live in a coop just like hundreds of others, all cut to the same pattern. Look at your Aunt Susan, now. This house belonged to old Joe Potter, he built it less'n ten years ago an Mis' Potter she had it the way she wanted it, and that was like the house she lived in when she was a girl, little, tucked-up rooms, air-tight stoves, a tidy on every chair, and she made portieres out of paper beads that tickled 'em both silly--yes, and tickled everybody in the ear that went through 'em, though that wan't what I meant to say. When she died, Joe wouldn't live here, said he wouldn't be so homesick for Julia in another house, this one was full of her. So, your Aunt Susan bought it, and what did she do?

"She knocked out partitions, took down fire-boards, threw out a good parlor set and lugged in tables and chairs from all over, put big panes of glass where there was little ones--in some places, she did, and only the good angels and Susan Winchester knows why she didn't change 'em all, they're terrible mean to wash--made the front hall into a setting room and the parlor into a bedroom, got two bathrooms and no dining room--well, to make a long story short, this house is now Susan Winchester. Anybody that knows Susan would know it was her house if they see it in China.

"Did you learn to keep house with your mother?"

The transition was so abrupt that Anne started. "I--my aunt brought me up--and nine cousins," she answered. "My aunt is as unlike Burt's as you can imagine, but just as dear and good. She had a big family, and there was never time enough to have her home as she wanted it--so she thought--and I thought so, too--but yet--Aunt Milly's home was always full of happy children, and, perhaps, that's what she really wanted, more than dainty furnishings or a spotless kitchen."

"Folks, mostly, get what they want, even if they don't know it," confirmed Mrs. Brown. "Look at the Admiral, here. He don't want to come over and live with me, same as Susan meant he should. He wants to stay right in his own home, and have his meals and petting same as usual, and here you come along today and give them to him. Trouble is, folks don't always know what it is they want."

When Mrs. Brown went back to her own dinner, she left Anne with something to think about. Washing the dishes in Aunt Susan's white sink, which was fitted to that very purpose, drying them upon a rack which held every dish apart from its neighbors, and, finally, polishing the quaintly shaped pieces upon Aunt Susan's checked towel, which remained dry and spotless; opening every drawer and cupboard to see that all was left in the dainty order she had found there, Anne had a clear vision of the blue and silver furnishings at the Kensington. What had she told Burt: "It doesn't look like either of us"?--while Aunt Susan's home--

"Burt," she called, "come and answer this question. Did you come to Byrnton instead of Branton on purpose?"

"What's this?" said Burt. "Cross-examination?"

"It's an examination, surely, but I won't be cross," replied Anne, with a rare dimple. "You must answer my question truly."

"Yes, Your Honor," said Burt. "I did, Your Honor."

"Did you know your Aunt Susan wouldn't be home?"

"Our Aunt Susan," corrected Burt.--"No, Your Honor--that is, I thought--"

"You knew she was going to California?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"This summer?"

"I didn't know exactly when--honestly, Nan, I did want you to meet her."

"Why?"'

"I knew you'd like the way she keeps house. I didn't realize that the house could speak for itself, without her.--You do like it, Nan?"

"I don't have to answer questions, because I'm the Judge," Nan told him. "I'll ask you one more. Do you want me to ask you to take this cottage, for us, in the fall, and stay in it until Aunt Susan comes back?"

"Not unless Your Honor pleases."

"Case dismissed, for lack of evidence," said Nan.--"Burt, could we live here?"

"We could. I'll admit it's what I'd like, if you do. The difference in rents would buy gasoline. Could you work here, and keep house, too?"

"I can if I'm smart," answered Nan, soberly. "I wonder if I'm smart."

"Dear," said Burt. "What have you done since you came to New York but work and keep house, too, in less convenient quarters than this, and with no one to help you--no good husband like me--?"

"That's so!" she turned a radiant face upon him.

"If we like, we can begin another home, of our very own, when Aunt Susan wants hers back," Burt smiled quizzically. "No one else's house would suit you for always, Nan. Ask me why."

"Why?"

"Because," said Burt in triumph, "personality, like the measles, will out!"

AMERICAN COOKERY

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Culinary Science and Domestic Economics

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LOVE'S DAY

When the morning on the hill crest snuffs the candles of the night, And the wide world blooms in beauty with the coming of the light, With the morn awakens, ever sweet and ever new, The happiness of knowing I share the dawn with you.

When the morning shadows shorten on the sunny slopes of noon, And the roads of earth are humming with toil's deep, insistent tune, Fragrant as a sea wind, blowing from an island blue, Through moiling hours of toiling comes my memory of you.

When the shadows of the twilight like long lashes dim and gray Close in slumber softly o'er the weary eyes of day, Calling through the twilight like harbor lights from sea, Your love becomes a beacon that shines with cheer for me!

_Arthur Wallace Peach._

LIMITATION OF ARMAMENTS

"On Armistice Day, November 11, at the hour when the twenty-four men representing the six participating nations first face each other across the council table, a nation-wide demonstration will be under way in the United States. Organized labor announces that in every town and city the workers will join with other citizens in mass-meetings and parades and that the keynote of Armistice Day should be, 'It is time to disarm.' It will help in impressing upon our own government and upon other governments that the people are weary of war-made tax burdens; that they are deeply in earnest in their demands that these burdens be removed. It will strengthen the purpose of the four men who are to represent America to know that they have the support of the workers and the voters. The

## action of organized labor will help in liberating and directing these

'moral forces'; but Labor cannot do it alone. There are others of these 'forces' that cannot be tapped or directed by Labor, and these must come into action. The time is drawing nigh for their mobilization."

_Philadelphia Public Ledger._

"Without the crowding, persistent, fighting force of the masses the crusade cannot be won. This is the people's salvation and it is, therefore, the people's fight. It is now up to the people of this country to make their wishes known and their opinions felt. It should be constantly in mind that, without the mobilized moral force of those upon whom these crushing burdens are now falling, there is little hope that the load will ever be lifted. If it is not lifted, no one can prophesy what lies beyond. There can be no relief from taxes, no relief from expenditures and no relief from war, except through disarmament."

W. E. BORAH.

"One more war, fully prepared for, prepared for with all the diabolical perversions of science, will reduce Europe and America to what Russia is today."

_Churchman._

Certainly we believe in the closest limitation of armament. In this matter we would go to the extreme limit. We are tired of militarism and tired of war and the rumors of war. While we need and desire a merchant marine, we have no use for fighting ships or submarines. Years ago we began to dream that America would never engage in another war, but we have witnessed the most horrid conflict that ever devastated the earth. How can any one ever want war again? The nation that makes an aggressive attack on another should be regarded as an outlaw and treated as such by the rest of the world. Dissensions are sure to arise, but these can be settled by conference and agreement or by arbitration.

Prosperity is dependent on peace. No other world-wide saving can equal that which can be gained through limitation of armament. The wealth of the world consists of just what the world produces. The one master word of the day is Production. People are not producing enough to satisfy all their wants; there is not stuff enough to go round. As a nation we need less of politics and more of production. Our main contention should be a moral appeal for unity in the industrial world. "The field for constructive, imaginative, and creative minds is the field of commerce."

A PIONEER IN HOME ECONOMICS

From a recent report by Mr. Eugene Davenport, vice-president of the University of Illinois, we draw the following:

Miss Isabel Bevier retired this year from her work in Home Economics at the University of Illinois. She entered the service of the University in 1900. During the twenty-one years of its existence, Professor Bevier has given herself unsparingly to the development and conduct, day by day, of the department of Home Economics. The field was almost entirely new, as a university subject. The courses have been outlined and conducted with a double purpose in mind. First, the presenting of home economics as a part of a liberal education; and second, the development of courses leading to a profession in teaching, dietetics, and cafeteria management.

The first graduating class in 1903 numbered three. The number rapidly increased, reaching ninety-four in 1918. The total number of students coming under the instruction of the staff of teachers for the last twenty-one years is approximately 5,000.

If efforts are to be judged by their results, whether in respect to alumnae or the present registration of undergraduate students, it is not too much to say that the purposes of this department have been in the main accomplished, by which is meant that the department has trained hundreds of competent executives and teachers without such exclusive attention to the professional as to break the contact with that great mass of university women who are to become, not teachers or professionals of any kind, but the heads of American homes. To achieve this double purpose has been the great ambition of the department, in which it has eminently succeeded.

It is not too much to say that at present, no department of the university enjoys more of the confidence and respect of the institution than does the department of Home Economics.

At the Recognition Service in honor of Professor Bevier, in May, 1921, the alumnae presented the University with an excellent portrait of Miss Bevier.

"FEEDING-THE-FAMILY" CLUB

Women are waking up to the fact that upon their shoulders rests the responsibility of having a healthier nation. Too many people are dying of avoidable diseases. Rich foods have taken more toll of life than war and pestilence, dietitians tell us. More and more stress is being placed upon diet--not for the sick only, but for those in good health, that they may preserve it. By diet we mean the proper combinations of foods and the scientific uses of vitamines, starches, proteins and acids. What we need is more than a reading acquaintance with those subjects.

A certain group of women in Long Beach, Calif., have decided that the acquisition of knowledge concerning food properties is the only way to better living for their families. They have grouped together under the name of the "Feeding-the-Family" Club, and, under the leadership of the head of the department of domestic science of the public schools, they meet on Wednesday evening each week for two hours to learn how to prepare healthful, nourishing meals for the average family. There are sixteen women in the group, representing fifty-six persons, most of whom are children in school. Think what it means to those children to have mothers who are vitally interested in seeing them grow up to be strong, virile men and women. "Knowledge makes Power," aye, the knowledge of the mothers of today makes for the powerful citizens of tomorrow.

R. C. C.

DO YOUR OWN WORK AND SAVE MONEY

If you are one of the people who are "sick unto death" of these thrift articles and are utterly weary of reading how to clean your porcelain gas-stove and keep your electric washer in repair.

The magazines are so full of helpful hints to the $5,000 and upwards class, that it seems as though a mere person like myself might inquire, "How about poor us? Won't somebody write something for us? How can we, who make up most of the world, live within our incomes?"

As nobody has responded as yet, I am going to tell how we manage and, possibly, some one else may be helped thereby.

Six years ago, when my husband and I awoke from our honeymoon trance, we found ourselves in California, strangers in a lone land, penniless and jobless. My husband was blessed with neither college education nor profession, but we were both young and undaunted--therefore we pulled through. We rented an apartment, furnished, at $15 per month and buckled in. I might say that the rent didn't have to be paid in advance or we wouldn't have moved in. My soul mate--otherwise husband--worked as a truckman, a taxi driver, a cement lamp-post worker, a chauffeur, a night watchman, a salesman, a cook and a dish-washer. In five years we moved twenty different times, an average of once every three months (not because we wished to skip our rent, but because my husband found jobs in so many different parts of the city).