Life flowed in immediately. A hundred details of a household, of a fruit farm in the picking season, awaited her attention. Her orchard and the Tiffany orchard were conducted together on a kind of a loose co-operative system devised by the Judge to give her the greatest amount of freedom with just as much responsibility as would be good for her. Foreseeing that Alice Sturtevant's daughter would never live on a farm indefinitely, that marriage or her own kind would claim her in the end, he arranged everything so that her oversight might pass on short notice to Olsen or to himself. In this harvest season, for example, he secured for both farms the cutters and pickers--the hardest problem for the Californian farmer. Also, the fruit went to his own sheds and yards for cutting and drying. He was among the sturdy minority who stood out against the co-operative driers which had absorbed most of the fruit crop in the Santa Clara Valley. The detail work about her place--such as setting out the fruit boxes, selecting the moment when apricots or pears were ripe for the picking, seeing that the trees, her permanent investment, were not injured by wagon or picker, keeping her own accounts in balance with those of Judge Tiffany--these and a hundred other little things she did herself and did them well. Especially was the up-keep of the orchard her special care; and this she managed with such native mother-sense that one learned in trees might have told just when he crossed the unfenced line from the Gray orchard to the Tiffany orchard. To-night, Olsen was waiting to know whether she thought that the ten rows of Moor Parks were ready for picking; he had just finished the first crop of the Judge's Royals and a small gang would be without pressing work on Monday morning. So they walked over the orchard together, pressing a golden ball here and there, and decided that the fruit was ripe and ready. Eleanor summoned Antonio for directions about boxes and ladders. The hen-house had to be inspected, for Eleanor was fumigating against the pip, brought into the Santa Lucia by an importation of fancy Eastern chickens. To-morrow's menu of the housekeeper was to be looked after. The things kept her busy until her solitary Sunday evening supper. Eleanor had dined alone so much that she had quite recovered from any self-pity on that score. Like the daughter of convent manners that she was, she kept up her self-respect by a little ceremony at this meal. She dressed for it usually; at least she put on fresh ribbons and flowers, gave a touch here and there to the table, held Maria to the refinements of service.