Mammy Lou mostly knows what's she talking about, but somehow I hate to think of Miss Irene with seven children. She reminds me so much of a flower. When I stop to think of it, all the girls I've written about remind me of flowers. Cousin Eunice is like a lovely iris, and Ann Lisbeth is like a Marechal Niel rose. Miss Cis Reeves used to look like a bright, happy little pansy, but that was before the twins were born. Now her collar to her shirtwaist always hikes up in the back and shows the skin underneath and her hat (whenever she gets a chance to put on a hat) is over one ear, and lots of times she looks like she wishes nobody in her family ever had been born, especially the twin that cries the loudest. When I told Miss Irene that she reminded me of a flower, she said well, it must be the jasmine flower, or something else like a funeral, for she was as desolate as everybody was in _Ben Bolt_. (I always wondered why they didn't bury "Sweet Alice" with the rest of her family instead of in a corner obscure and alone.) I told her then just to pacify her that maybe she would feel better after she got married one way or another and stopped reading books named _The Call of_----all sorts of things, and thinking that she had to answer all the calls. Cousin Eunice says her only troubles in matrimony were stomach and eye teeth and frozen water-pipes. She never gets disgusted with life except on nights when Rufe goes to the lodge to see the third degree administered. She can even write a few articles now if she gives Waterloo a pan of water and a wash-rag to play with, but she says many of her brightest thoughts never were fountain-penned because he happened to squall in the midst of them. For the last few days Mr. Fairfax has been riding around the country looking for a little cabin where he can be by himself and fish and read Schopenhauer. I imagine from what they've read before me that he must be the man who wrote the post-cards you send to newly engaged couples saying, "Cheer up! The worst is yet to come!" Mr. Fairfax says the blue smoke will curl up from his cabin chimney at sunset and form a "symphony in color" against the green tree-tops; and he can lead the "untrammeled life." He is begging Miss Irene to go and lead it with him, I'm sure; and she's half a mind to do it, but can't bear the _thoughts_ of it when she remembers Doctor Bynum's eyes and hands. Altogether the poor girl looks as uncertain as if she was walking on a pavement covered with banana peelings. I think the blue-smoke-cabin idea is very romantic, but when I mentioned it to Mammy Lou she got mad and jerked the skillet off the stove so suddenly that the grease popped out and burnt her finger. "Blue smoke! Blue _blazes_!" she said, walloping her dish-rag around and around in it. "I hope that pretty critter ain't goin' to be took in by no such talk as that! Blue smoke curlin'! Well, _she'll_ be the one to make the fire that curls it!"