In fact, during the course of the summer you have grown so friendly with your garden that, as you wander about its tangled paths in the late fall days, you cannot help feeling a twinge of yearning pain that makes you tremble to think what weakness you might have been guilty of had you not already burned your bridges behind you, and told the house agent that nothing would induce you to renew the lease next spring. You remember how fully and carefully you explained to him your position in the matter. With a glow of modest pride you recall the fact that you stated your case to him so convincingly, that he had to agree with you that a city life was the only life you and your family could possibly lead. He understood fully how much you liked the place and the people, and how, if this were only so, and that were only the other way, you would certainly stay. And you feel if the house agent agrees with you against his own interest, you must be right in your decision. Ah, dear Modestus! You know little enough about flowers; but oh, how little, little, little you know about suburban house agents! Let us pass lightly over the third winter. It is a period of hesitation, perplexity, expectancy, and general awkwardness. You are, and you are not. You belong nowhere, and to no one. You have renounced your new allegiance, and you really do not know when, how, or at what point you are going to take up the old one again. And, in point of fact, you do not regard this particular prospect with feelings of complete satisfaction. You remember, with a troubled conscience, the long list of social connections which you have found it too troublesome to keep up at long range. I say you, for I am quite sure that Mrs. Modestus will certify me that it was You and not She, who first declared that it was practically impossible to keep on going to the Smith's dinners or the Brown's receptions. You don't know this, my dear Modestus, but I assure you that you may take it for granted. You remember also that your return must carry with it the suggestion of the ignominy of defeat, and you know exactly the tone of kindly contemptuous, mildly assumed superiority with which your friends will welcome you back. And the approaching severance of your newer ties troubles your mind in another way. Your new friends do not try to dissuade you from going (they are too wise in a suburban way for that), but they say, and show in a hundred ways, that they are sorry to think of losing you. And this forbearance, so different from what you have to expect at the other end of your moving, reproaches and pains while it touches your heart. These people were all strangers to you two years and a half ago; they are chance rather than chosen companions. And yet, in this brief space of time--filled with little neighborly offices, with faithful services and tender sympathies in hours of sickness, and perhaps of death, with simple, informal