"Look here, my friend, haven't we been married long enough for you to cease to feel the necessity for those pretty speeches?"
"No; but I don't want you to think you must--"
"Now, now, don't be Patty Simpleton! When I make forced or perfunctory speeches, you'll know it! Don't you think so, Patty Mine?"
"Yep. Oh, Billee, look, there's the place for the tea-house!"
Patty pointed to a shady nook, halfway up the side of the ravine.
"Great!" agreed Bill. "Wait a minute,--I'll sketch it in."
He pulled an old envelope and a pencil from his pockets, and rapidly drew the location with a few hasty strokes, and added a suggestion of an Oriental looking building that was meant for the proposed tea-house.
"Just right!" cried Patty; "you _are_ clever, dear! Now draw Baby and me drinking tea there."
A few more marks did for the tea drinkers and a queer looking figure hurrying along the path was doubtless the father coming home.
Patty declared herself satisfied and folded the paper and put it safely away in her pocket.
"We'll get at that as soon as the landscape gardener finishes the sunken garden," she said.
"Oh, I'm _glad_ I'm alive! I never expected to have everything I wanted in the way of gardens! Don't you love them, too?"
"Of course,--and yet, not as you do, Patty. I was brought up in the great West, you know,--and sometimes I long for the big spaces."
"I mean the prairies,--yes, even the desert,--the limitless expanse of--"
"Limitless fiddlesticks! You can't have the earth!"
"I don't want it. You're all the world to me, then why crave the earth?"
"Nice boy! Well, as I was about to say, do you know, I think it's time we had some guests up here, just for to see and to admire this paradise of ours."
"Have them, by all means. Are you settled enough?"
"Oh, yes. And I shan't have anything much to do. Mrs. Chase is a host in herself, and Nurse Winnie takes full charge of my child,--with Susie's help."
"Do you own that infant exclusively, ma'am? I notice you always say _my_ child!"
"As I've told you, you don't count. Why, you won't really count until the day when some nice young man comes to ask you for the hand of Mademoiselle Fleurette."
"Heaven forbid the day! I'll send him packing!"
"Indeed you won't! I want my daughter to marry and live happy ever after,--as _I'm_ doing."