Idly he picked up a pencil, and before he was aware of it the words ran into lines. It seemed as though his cousin's mood, thought, inspiration, worked through him. Upon what flowering shore, 'Neath what blue skies She stands and waits, It is not mine to know; Only I know that shore is fair, Those skies are blue. Her voice I may not hear, Nor see her eyes, Yet there are times When in the wind she speaks. When stars and flowers Tell me of her eyes. When rivers chant her name. If ever signs were sure, I know she waits; If not, what means this sweetness in the wind, The singing in the rain, the love in flowers? What mean these whispers in the air, This calling from the hills and from the sea? These tendernesses of the Day and Night? Unless she waits! What in the world was this absurd sweetness running in his veins? He laughed a little. A slight flush, too, came and went its way. The tip of the pencil snapped as he pressed too heavily on it. He had drawn it through the doggerel with impatience, for he suddenly realised that he had told a deep, deep secret to the paper. It had stammered its way out before he was aware of it. This was youth and boyhood strong upon him, the moods of Crayfield that he had set long ago on one side--deliberately. The mood that wrote the Song of the Blue Eyes had returned, waking after a sleep of a quarter of a century. 'What rubbish!' he exclaimed; 'I shall be an author next!' He tore it up and, rolling the pieces into a ball, played catch with it. 'What waste of energy! Six months ago that energy would have gone into something useful, a patent--perhaps an improvement in the mechanism of--of--' he hesitated, then finished the sentence with a sigh of yearning and another passing flush--'a perambulator!' He tossed it out of the window and, laughing, leaned out to watch it fall. It bounced upon a head of tousled hair beneath, then flew off sideways in the wind and rattled away faintly among the vines. The head was his cousin's. 'What are you up to?' cried the author, looking up. 'I'm not a waste- paper basket.' There was a cigarette ash in his beard. 'Sending you ideas, he answered. 'I'm coming myself now. Look out!' He was in high spirits again. He believed in that Fairy Princess. 'All right; I've put you in already. Everybody will wonder who Cousinenry is. ...' The untidy head of hair popped in again. 'Hark!' cried Rogers, trying to look round the corner of the house. He edged himself out at a dangerous angle. His ears had caught another sound. There was music in the air. CHAPTER XIX The sweet spring winds came laughing down the street, bearing a voice that mingled with their music. _Daddy! Daddy! vite; il y a un paquet!'_ sounded in a child's excited cry. 'It arrives this afternoon. It's got the Edinburgh postmark. Here is the notice. _C'est enorme!'_