‘Wait till to-morrow.’ ‘I cannot; I shall die of impatience. I have set my heart on a game of bowls. Do you not see, papa, that the weather may change in the night and spoil play for to-morrow?’ ‘Then what do you wish?’ ‘Oh! my dear papa,’ Eve nestled into his arms, ‘I don’t want much, only that you would cut the grass for me. It really will not take you ten minutes. I will promise to sweep up what is cut.’ ‘I am engaged, Eve, on a very delicate test.’ ‘So am I, papa.’ Mr. Ignatius Jordan looked up at her with dull surprise in his eyes. ‘I mean, papa, that if you really love me you will jump up and mow the grass. If you don’t love me you will go on muddling with those minerals and chemicals.’ The gaunt old man stood up. Eve knew her power over him. She could make him obey her slightest caprice. She ran before him to the gardener’s tool-house and brought him the scythe. In the quadrangle was a grass plat, and on this Eve had decided to play her game. ‘All the balls are here except the Jack,’ said she. ‘I shall have to rummage everywhere for the black-a-moor; I can’t think where he can be.’ Then she ran into the house in quest of the missing ball. The grass had been left to grow all spring and had not been cut at all, so that it was rank. Mr. Jordan did not well know how to wield a scythe. He tried and met with so little success that he suspected the blade was blunt. Accordingly he went to the tool-house for the hone, and, standing the scythe up with the handle on the swath, tried to sharpen the blade.