And never to this day have I clearly understood what she meant by that. A great deal that Alicia said was difficult to understand. And nothing was more so than this insistence on her part that anything Californian was superior to everything European. After our visit to the Villa d'Este I gave up. She looked it over pleasantly and gave her verdict. "I guess they copied it from the Gillespie place at Santa Barbara," she said; "only, of course, these hills are nothing as compared to the Coast Range for height." It was just after this that I abandoned all effort to force a course in architecture, or indeed in any of the arts, upon Peaches. I began dimly to perceive that it was not only useless but that her education was not really impaired by the secession of my efforts along these lines. She possessed a faculty for picking out what she wanted to learn and learning it thoroughly. And after all that is the truest education, as my dear father used to say. But I digress. Let us take up our sequence where Abby left me on that first afternoon. Scarcely had she departed, driving off in a smart little red automobile of the type which I had learned to distinguish as a roadster, as I observed from the window, and which gave no clew to the newly disclosed fact of her poverty--scarcely had she departed and I had partially mastered the emotions which her extraordinary visit had engendered in my bosom when Alicia and her father returned. They had been out, as I believe I have mentioned, for the purpose of procuring cards of admission to the public gambling hell. They had also got cards for a place called the casino, one of which was offered to me. I accepted it with gratitude, for at home there was a casino out at Duxbury where we spent our summers; a very charming place it was, too, with a fine view of the ocean from the veranda, and a dance for the young people every Saturday night, and I had greatly enjoyed taking my knitting there. I was at present secretly at work upon a pair of socks for Mr. Pegg, intended as a small appreciation of all he had done for me, and I felt sure that this casino would be an excellent place in which to complete them, particularly when Mr. Pegg and his daughter were away gambling. I had, needless to say, protested against their avowed intentions in this matter, but to no avail.