Dorothy had desired to go for a few wild flowers for the table, but she had not escaped from William Henry Bulkley. In all the immaculate glory of his spring attire, as tightly trussed up as a large fowl ready for the oven, he walked at her side when the path permitted, and breathed stertorously behind her when it wouldn't. And when with a cry of joy she discovered that a twisted old hawthorn had actually hung out some garlands of snowy blossoms, he nearly had an apoplexy from his frantic efforts to obtain them for her. He loaded her with fulsome compliments, and he looked so strangely at her that the poor child hurried back to the house, vowing it was the last time she would go out with him, if he were papa's friend twenty times over; and passing him over to mamma in the parlor, she hastily arranged her handful of blossoms for the centre of the table, and captured her father and instructed him as to the serving of the chicken. As she spoke a trembling came upon his weak mouth, and his pained blue eyes looked away over her head. She put a pink-tipped forefinger on his lip and said, low: "Don't, papa, don't! It's all right, only dear, dear papa, you won't forget, will you now--for Syb and me the portions with the bits of green--you understand, papa?" And he sighed and answered bitterly: "Yes, I understand! God knows I understand!" At last, then, they sat at table. Sybil, holding her hatchet behind her in temporary amity, glowed and sparkled, cheerfully proclaimed her interest in the cult of delicate feeding, and boldly challenged judgment on the principal dish before them, the chicken _à la_ Maryland, sorely frightening her family by her reckless daring. But Mr. Bulkley, with Dorothy's wistful blue eyes upon him, without hesitation gallantly declared it could not be equalled this side of Mason and Dixon's line; and, to poor Lena's sorrow, proved his sincerity by accepting a second helping, which was hard on that help-maiden, who had not even eggs to look forward to later on.