You can imagine how excited we were when at the end of three years we finally signed the contract with McManus & Mann, Contractors and Builders. We were simply house-crazy by that time. I wanted to celebrate the important occasion somehow, so I went down to Mr. McManus's office and ordered several bundles of six-foot-length laths, such as are used in plastering a room, to be sent up to our lot on Saturday morning. Will and I always spend Saturday afternoons together, and, provided with the roll of plans, a yard-stick, a hatchet and my lunch-basket packed with tea and sandwiches, we started out about two P. M. to lay out our house, life size, with the laths on the very spot where it was so soon now to stand. By five o'clock I was serving tea before the fireplace in the living-room, and apple-blossom petals were blowing through the kitchen and hall partitions into the very cream-pitcher by my side. It was just when the water over my alcohol stove had begun to boil that our first guests arrived. Dr. Van Breeze is married now, and his wife, Alice, and I are very good friends. For the three years that Will and I had been working on house-plans she had followed the changes in them as if they were hers. So I 'phoned her that I should be delighted if she and George (George is Dr. Van Breeze) would take tea with us Saturday afternoon at four-thirty in our new house. When they appeared in their touring-car at the foot of our hill, I saw that dear Dr. Graham and Mrs. Graham were in the back seat, and I dashed through the living-room wall and down to the road to meet them. Ten minutes later the Omsteds arrived strolling up the hill from their house which is the nearest one to ours. Will had already arranged boulders for chairs around the fireplace, and my dainty little sandwiches and tiny cream puffs were laid out neatly on plates covered with fresh napkins. The tea was hot and strong and fragrant; the decorations of six trees full of apple-blossoms, lovely to behold; the illumination of a pink and blue sunset, reflected in the lake below, more beautiful than a hundred electric lights. After we had drank tea and eaten the last cream puff, I invited my guests to inspect the house. Every one entered into my little game. Dr. Omsted made us all respect the partitions as if they existed; George Van Breeze insisted on walking up the front stairs; and dear Dr. Graham found a grasshopper somewhere and exclaimed chuckling, "Oh, my dear Pandora" (he still calls me that silly name), "what of your housekeeping? I saw dozens of these in your pantry!"