Terence Donelly was a college chum of Evan’s at Oxford, and is as fascinating and warm-hearted as only a well-bred Irishman knows how to be. He had visited us many times before the Western trip that had buckled into double harness a spirited roadster who had travelled straight and true in single harness without either check-rein or blinders for nearly forty years. Consequently, Mrs. Terence was an object of an interest that became intense upon the thought of meeting her. “She is small, her hair is light brown and her eyes flash and dance so that I don’t remember anything else about them,” said Evan, slowly, shutting his eyes, as if searching his memory for an accurate picture. “I happen to know that she is twenty-six, though she does not look it by five or six years. I haven’t made up my mind about her disposition; one moment she has an almost pathetic expression as though she needed sympathy and protection, and then her eyes blaze, and she runs her hand through her front hair until it stands on end, and she reminds one of something as unapproachable as a coil of slender live wire. “Her people? Her father was a Californian, but her mother was an Eastern woman by descent, the daughter of a Judge Morland who came from Massachusetts, and, like many another boy, tired of farm life, taught school to get his education, and then by the same process worked his way out West. Terry has tried to look up the family to please his wife, who seems very lonely in spite of all her independence, but there is no one left. That is why I thought you might cheer her up from the woman’s side of things if they settled here. She is unconventional enough to satisfy you, I’ll warrant, and would be delighted to go up in the attic on a wet day and dream pussy willows, and the fact that hers may be the western species of the tree would be a sort of tonic for the dreams.” “You must have said something to Terry about his wife’s coming here,” I announced, when he had ended. “I may have,” Evan answered. “The poor fellow is worried because she is getting restless, and hasn’t a woman friend in New York, and I thought if she could meet the Cortrights and Bradfords, Sukey Latham and the rest, the air might clear in a twinkling.” “I’ll write to her to-night; imagine you and me, married only a year and living in Chicago or San Francisco, father dead, and not even Aunt Lot or Martha Saunders to turn either against or to, and no home to which to return! _What_ a wretched time you would be having with me! Nevertheless, upon your head be the failure to find in this neighbourhood the ideal house built around a magnet.”