“You’ll git my money,” he said through his gasps. “Well, for heaven’s sake! you little scamp, I don’t want your nickel.” “’Tain’t no nickel,” he blurted out. “He gimme a quarter for turnin’ de cartwheel and standin’ on my head. Dat warn’t work; dat was play.” Esther’s voice echoed through the halls. When she stopped laughing, she said: “You poor little mite, I hope he will give you the half of his kingdom. Here, take the brush and earn your fortune.” As Tagger took up the other boot, to finish it, Esther unclasped the bunch of morning glories and tied them at the top of the one she had polished. Seeing nothing of Glenn, and passing a word with Mrs. Curtis who was busy in the dining room, she went out to the flower garden. About her in riotous health and beauty grew flowers that gave no evidence of care. There was a suggestion of wilfulness everywhere. The sun had not been up long. It was splashing its rays in the face of the great, slumbering mountains like spray on the face of a sluggard. Glenn walked up behind Esther as she bent over a white rosebush in the heyday of its blooming. “You did not waste time waiting for me. This is worth seeing. Don’t you think so?” As her face raised to his, how pure and radiant it looked. The purity was heightened by the flush. “Oh, if I could only do to them as I want to.” She stretched her arms and brought them together with a sigh. “I’d like to hold them close and love them as hard as I could; then I’d be satisfied.” “You’d crush them, break their stems and pay the penalty of indulgence by pricking those arms of yours by the wretched little briars hidden under the beauty that you would spoil,” he said, sharply. He wanted her to see a lesson in this. “That’s the way with life,” he said, watching her break off one of the buds which she put in his coat. “Come on. You have got enough. I must leave by two o’clock.” “I’ve been ready longer than you--my violin is on the porch. We can go by there to get it.” At the start Glenn saw that Esther looked very radiant, but suddenly the look of exaltation faded from her face. He did not understand her mood. Generally she enjoyed what he recalled to her, visible or invisible, with the most exquisite feeling. He dearly loved that trait in her. This was not one of her receptive moods. She did not seem to know when they got to the spring. He indulged in an indolent sprawl upon the grass, and she dropped down on the roots of a tree by his side. He was an ideal lounger. That was sufficient contentment for awhile. He was trying to think it out without asking her.