The story was really under way now, and Cope went on with more confidence and with greater animation. "'Look and see,' said the Sassafras. "They looked and saw. Among its simple ordinary leaves were several with two lobes--one on each side. 'Will these do?' "'Do?' said the nymphs. 'We said we had two thumbs, but we meant one on each hand, stupid. Do? We should say not!' "The Sassafras was mortified. 'Well,' he said, 'that's all I can manage this season. I'm sorry not to have understood you young ladies and your needs. Come back again next spring.' "It was a long time to wait, but they waited. Next May----" Amy, now unworried by George Pearson, began to get the thread of the thing. Foster was sure the thread would run through. Hortense was still alert for ulterior meanings. Poor Cope, however, had no ambition to spin a double thread,--a single one was all he was equal to. "Next May the nymphs, after nursing their thumbs for a year----" Hortense frowned. "----came back again; and there, among the plain leaves and the double-lobed leaves, were several fresh bright, smooth ones with a single lobe well to one side,--the very thing for mittens. And------" "Yes, he has done it," Foster acknowledged. "And that," ended Cope rather stridently, as he rose to go on the flood of a sudden yet unexpected success, "is Why the Sassafras----" "Why the Sassafras has Three Kinds of Leaves!" cried Medora in triumph. Mittens for midsummer made no difficulty. Cope gave Carolyn careful thanks for her support at the piano, and did not see that she felt he too could be a poet if he only would. He went out of his way to shake hands with Hortense, and did not realize how nearly a new quarrel had opened. He stepped over to do the like with Amy; but she went out with him into the hall,--the only one of the party who did,--and even accompanied him to the front door. "Thank you so much," she said, looking up into his face smilingly and holding his hand with a long, clinging touch. "It went beautifully; and there are others that will go even better." "Others?" He thought, for an instant, that she was thanking him for his Legend and was even threatening to regard him as a flowing fount of invention; but he soon realized that her mind was fixed exclusively on their duet--if such it was to be called. "The deuce!" he thought. "Enough is enough." Despite his success with the Sassafras, he went home discomforted and even flustered. That hand was too much like the hand of possession. The girl was stealing over him like a light, intangible vapor. He struck ahead with a quicker gait, as if trying to outwalk a creeping fog. One consolation, however: Hortense had come like a puff of wind. Even a second squall from the same quarter would not be altogether amiss.