But even a little child could explain the ensuing June. Oh, June was perfectly wonderful that year! Bud, blossom, birdsong, breeze, rioting headlong through the land; warm days as sweet and lush as a greenhouse vapor; crisp nights faintly metallic, like the scent of stars; hurdy-gurdies romping tunefully on every street corner; even the ash-man flushing frankly pink across his dusty cheek-bones. Like two fairies who had sublet a giant’s cave, the White Linen Nurse and the Little Crippled Girl turned themselves loose upon the Senior Surgeon’s gloomy old house. It certainly was a gloomy old house, but handsome withal, square and brown and substantial, and most generously gardened within high brick walls. Except for dusting the lilac-bushes with the hose, and weeding a few rusty leaves out of the privet hedge, and tacking up three or four scraggly sprays of English ivy, and re-greening one or two bay-tree boxes, there was really nothing much to do to the garden. But the house? O ye gods! All day long from morning till night, but most particularly from the back door to the barn, sweating workmen scuttled back and forth till nary a guilty piece of black-walnut furniture had escaped. All day long from morning till night, but most particularly from ceilings to floors, sweltering workmen scurried up and down step-ladders, stripping dingy papers from dingier plasterings. When the White Linen Nurse wasn’t busy renovating the big house or the little stepdaughter, she was writing to the Senior Surgeon. She wrote twice. “Dear Dr. Faber,” the first letter said-- Dear Dr. Faber: How do you do? Thank you very much for saying you didn’t care what in thunder I did to the house. It looks _sweet_. I’ve put white, fluttery muslin curtains ’most everywhere. And you’ve got a new solid-gold-looking bed in your room. And the Kiddie and I have fixed up the most scrumptious light blue suite for ourselves in the ell. Pink _was_ wrong for the front hall, but it cost me only $29.00 to find out, and now that’s settled for all time. I am very, very, very, very busy. Something strange and new happens every day. Yesterday it was three ladies and a plumber. One of the ladies was just selling soap, but I didn’t buy any. It was horrid soap. The other two were calling ladies, a silk one and a velvet one. The silk one tried to be nasty to me. Right to my face she told me I was more of a lady than she had dared to hope. And I told her I was sorry for that, as you’d had one “lady,” and it didn’t work. Was that all right? But the other lady was nice, and I took her out in the kitchen with me while I was painting the woodwork, and right there in her white kid gloves she laughed and showed me how to mix the paint pearl gray. _She_ was nice. It was your sister-in-law. I like being married, Dr. Faber. I like it lots better than I thought I would. It’s fun being the biggest person in the house.