Then they laughed--the kind lady, the little girl, and even his mother; but tears rose to his eyes with shame; he struggled and kicked, so that the lady had to let him glide down from her lap, and his mother said, reproachfully, “You are naughty, Paul.” But he went behind the arbor and cried, until the little girl came to him and said: “Oh dear, you must not cry. God does not like naughty children.” Then he was ashamed again, and rubbed his eyes with his hands till they were dry. “And now I will show you the sundial,” continued the child. “Oh yes, and the glass balls,” he said. “They were broken a long time ago,” she replied; “a stone I threw flew by accident into one of them, and the other was blown down by a storm.” And then she showed him the spots where they had stood. “And this is the sundial,” she went on. “Where?” he asked, looking round, wonderingly. They were standing before a gray, unpretending post, on which was fastened a sort of wooden plate. The child laughed, and said that this was the sundial. “Oh, fie!” he retorted, angrily; “you are mocking me.” “Why should I want to mock you?” she asked; “you have never done me any harm.” And then she repeated her assertion that this was the sundial, and nothing else, and she also pointed out to him the hand, a miserable rusty piece of metal, which stuck out from the middle of the dial and threw its shadow just on number six, which was written there among other figures. “Oh, this is too stupid,” he said, and turned away. The sundial in the garden of the White House was the first great disappointment of his life. When he returned to the arbor with his new friend, he found a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman with bushy whiskers there, who wore a gray shooting-coat, and whose eyes seemed to twinkle merrily. “Who is that?” asked Paul, timidly, hiding behind his friend. She laughed and said, “That is my papa; you need not be afraid of him.” And, shouting with joy, she jumped on the strange man’s knee. Then he thought to himself, would he ever dare to jump on _his_ papa’s knee, and from this he concluded that all fathers were not alike. But the man in the shooting-coat caressed his child, kissed her on both cheeks, and let her ride on his knees. “See! Elsbeth has got a playfellow,” said the kind, strange lady, pointing towards Paul, who, hidden by the foliage, glanced shyly towards the arbor. “Just come here, my boy,” the man called out merrily and snapped his fingers. “Come--here, on the other knee; there is room enough for you,” called out the child; and when, with a questioning glance at his mother, he crept timidly nearer, the strange man seized him, put him on his other knee, and then they had a merry race.