He would write a story, all about tulips. That time when Mamma had taken him one Easter holidays to Holland, when the tulips had been out all along the railway line. And the cows with blankets on in case it rained. But no, it would have to be in England, the tourist effect in stories was dreadful. It would be a Dutchman with a strange passion for tulips--that was rather beautiful, that idea. Yes, and he would have passed all his life in sending tulips over to England, till he had come to think that England must have been a carpet of them in spring--he would have to be uneducated and think that England was only a very tiny island. He would be just a little bit queer with lovely haunting ideas that drifted through his brain, and he would love his tulips! So that Holland in springtime would not have enough tulips for him, and he would sell the little he had so as to buy a passage, that he might feed his soul on his tulips in England. His place in the bulb farm would be to address the wrappers, and there would be an address in Cumberland that he was told to write to very often. Then there would be those hills to work into the story, and he would go on a bicycle, which he had bought with his last penny, and each hill would seem to hide his tulips, they might be there, just beyond, behind the next hill. Till he would fall down, dead, his heart broken! But perhaps that was a little flat. It must simmer over in his brain. He would be very queer, with little fragments of insanity here and there. It would work. The laziness of this afternoon. Mrs. Haye crushed grass on the way to Mrs. Trench. Herbert stretched out a hand and made clucking noises, while Mrs. Lane giggled. Weston shifted his feet slightly, and put his cap further back on his head, before the artichokes. Harry began hissing his way down another paragraph, and Doris was fondly tying a bow on the end of one pigtail. Jenny, the laundry cat, was two inches nearer the sparrow. Nan put down her cup with a sigh and folded her hands on her lap, while her eyes fixed on the fly-paper over the table. * * * * * They were all standing round him on the lawn. “Seven days old. I said what I could to Mrs. Trench. A terrible affair. What can one do?” “Poor little mite.” “What was it, Mrs. Haye?” “Gastric pneumonia, I think, nurse. I am sure that Brodwell muddled the case.” “To think of it!” “Of course, Mrs. Haye, gastric pneumonia with a seven days’ child is very grave.” “Was it a boy or a little girl’m?” “A girl. How is he to-day, nurse?” “Oh, I’m all right.” “I think we are getting on very nicely, aren’t we?” “He has more colour to him to-day.” “Oh, Master John, you do look a heap better.” “Thanks, Nan, I’m sure I do.” “Yes, Mrs. Haye, he really has. In one or two days we shall be up and about again, shan’t we?” “I suppose so.” “Of course you will, dear.” “It did give me a fright.” “Well, there’s another fright over anyway, Nan.”