Doctor Geddes made me spend my days in the garden that Schmetz had labored upon with such loving-kindness, and that in consequence was become a marvel of bloom and scent. Every butterfly in South Carolina must have visited that garden. I hadn't known there were that many butterflies in the world. All the florist-shop windows in New York, that I had once paused before with envy and longing, were stinted and poor and pale before the living, out-o'-doors wonder of it. Florist shops haven't any bees, nor birds, nor butterflies, nor trees that wave their green branches at you like friendly hands. A flowering vine festooned the marble Love, and one great scarlet spray of bloom flamed upon his marble torch, "so lyrically," Miss Martha Hopkins said, that she was moved to write a poem about it. I thought it a very nice poem, and I said so, when she read it to us. But Doctor Geddes, who doesn't care for poetry, except Robert Burns's, rubbed his nose. "Oh, well, your grandmother and your aunts used to make antimacassars and wall-pockets and paper flowers," he ruminated. "Why shouldn't you make poetry if you feel like it?" "You are to be pitied, Richard," said Miss Martha, with crushing charity. "Such a disposition! And the older you grow the worse it gets." "Confound it, Martha!--" "I do," said she. Alicia looked at Richard with impersonal eyes. She looked at the ruffled center of culture. "Don't pay any attention to him, Miss Martha," she said, with a charming smile. "Your poem is very pretty, and he knows it." "He means well," said Miss Martha, resignedly. "Now, you look here, Martha!" the doctor said angrily, "I won't have anybody telling me to my face I mean well. You might as well call me a fool outright." "You are far from being a fool, Richard. And you do mean well. Everybody knows that." He turned appealingly to his dear Leetchy, and received his first lesson in Domestic Science. "Miss Martha is right, Richard," she decided. "Leetchy," the doctor asked, when the mollified Miss Hopkins had departed, "why did Martha go off grinning?" "How should I know?" wondered Alicia, innocently. Then she looked at him with Irish eyes: "Have you had your lunch, dear?" she asked. "Lunch?" He looked bewildered. "Because I'm going to fix Sophy's lunch now, and you may have yours with her, if you like. I love to wait on you, Richard," she added, and a beautiful color flooded her face. He caught his breath. When she went back to the house, his eyes followed her adoringly. "Sophy," he said, huskily, "what does she see in me? Do you think I'm good enough for _her_, Sophy?" "I think you are quite good enough even for Alicia."