drinking in the "beer gardens" or loitering in the side doors of saloons, gave him back that dear ideal of girlish innocence who had sat beside him under a green bower of branches in a childish idyll—and met him like a vision in the snows of an enchanted Sunday morning—and looked across a lovers' valley at the sunset with him, holding hands, under a quiet pine. And when he received a letter from her, written in Paris, he went to Madison Square to read it among those exiled trees that were as dusty as himself and as lonely for the country and the call of birds.
She wrote, in voluble good spirits, of an ocean voyage that had apparently been to her a ten days' "excursion"—an excursion on which she had not missed a single meal, on which all her fellow-picnickers had been "lovely," on which she had had "such a good time." And this prattle was as sweet to him as poetry. She had seen London and Windsor Castle and a host of her mother's relatives and Westminster Abbey; and she was now in Paris, but they were only to stay a week; they were going right on to Germany, It was all, indescribable. He must see it for himself. She had met a charming girl, a "forty-second cousin," who was studying music, too; and they were travelling together, and her cousin spoke French. It was terribly warm, and there were no soda-water fountains—not even ice-water at the English hotels. New York was better than that! What was he doing? He must write to her as soon as they were settled some place. She had to stop now, because her cousin was taking her to an art gallery. She was his "sincerely, 'Miss Margaret.'"
