"I admit that I will be in a dilemma when we reach the music, for no matter how much I protest, you will know just what I think." "Yes, you had better be honest." "Come, open for me the treasures of your ripe experience. You have been a week in the country. I know you will give me a rosebud--a rare old-fashioned one, if you please, with a quaint, sweet meaning, for I see that such abound in this garden, and I am wholly out of humor with the latest mode in everything. Recalling your taste for homely, honest worth, as shown by your passion for Old Plod, I shall seek a blossom among the vegetables for you. Ah, here is one that is sweet, white, and pretty," and I plucked a cluster of flowers from a potato-hill. "By the way, what flower is this?" I asked demurely. She looked at it blankly for a moment, then remarked, with a smile, "You have said that it was sweet, white, and pretty. Why inquire further?" "Miss Warren, you have been a week in the country and don't know a potato-blossom." "Our relations may be changed," she said, "and you become the teacher." "Oh, here comes Zillah. We will settle the question according to Scripture. Does it not say, 'A little child shall lead them'? Who are you so glad to see, little one, Miss Warren or me?" "I don't know thee very well yet," she said shyly. "Do you know Miss Warren very well?" "Oh, yes, indeed." "How soon did you come to know her well?" "The first day when she kissed me." "I think that's a very nice way of getting acquainted. Won't you let me kiss you good-night when you get sleepy." She looked at me with a doubtful smile, and said, "I'm afraid thy mustache will tickle me." The birds were singing in the orchard near, but there was not a note that to my ear was more musical than Miss Warren's laugh. I stooped down before the little girl as I said: "Suppose we see if a kiss tickles you now, and if it don't now, you won't mind it then, you know." She came hesitatingly to me, and gave the coveted salute with a delicious mingling of maidenly shyness and childish innocence and frankness. "Ah!" I exclaimed, "Eden itself contained nothing better than that. To think that I should have been so honored--I who have written the records of enough crimes to sink a world!" "Perhaps if you had committed some of them she wouldn't have kissed you." "If I had to live in a ninety-nine story tenement-house, as so many do, I think I would have committed them all. Well, I may come to it. Life is a risky battle to such as I, but I'm in heaven now." "You do seem very happy," she said, looking at me wistfully.