"What kind of things does the grass cutter, shearing off a few miserable dandelions, make you want to do, Bella? You should smell the jasmine and the oleanders of New Orleans. These are nothing but weeds." "How can you say so?" she exclaimed; "besides, most of the things I want to do are wicked, anyhow." "Jove!" exclaimed Fairfax. "That _is_ a confession." She corrected. "You ought not to say 'Jove' like that, Cousin Antony. You can cut it and make it sound like 'Jovah,' it sounds just like it." "What wicked things do you want to do, Bella?" She pointed to the merry-go-rounds, where the giraffes, elephants, and horses raced madly round to the plaintive tune of "Annie Laurie," ground out by a hurdy-gurdy. "I'd _love_ to go on." Fairfax put his hand in his pocket, but she pulled it back. "No, Cousin Antony, please. It's not the money that keeps me back, though I haven't any. It's Sunday, you know." "Oh," her cousin accepted dismally. And Bella indicated a small boy carrying a tray of sweets who had advanced towards the three with a hopeful grin. "I'd perfectly _love_ to have some of those _lossingers_, but mother says 'street candy isn't pure.' Besides, it's Sunday." "Nonsense!" exclaimed Fairfax. "Do you mean to say that out here in God's free air you are going to preach me a sermon?" He beckoned the boy. "Oh," cried Gardiner, "can't we _choose_, Cousin Antony?" The little cousins bent above the tray and slowly and passionately selected, and their absorption in the essence of wintergreen, sassafras, and peppermint showed him how much this pleasure meant to these rich children. Their pockets full, they linked their arms in his again. "I have never had such fun in all my life as I do with you, Cousin Antony," Bella told him. "Then come along," he suggested, recklessly. "You must ride once on the merry-go-round." And before the little Puritans realized the extent of their impiety, Fairfax had lifted Bella on a horse and Gardiner on an elephant, paid their fare and started them away. He watched Bella, her hat caught by its elastic, fallen off her head on the first round, her cheeks flushed and her eyes like stars, and bravely her straight little arm stretched out to catch the ring. There was triumph in her cry, "Oh, Cousin _Antony_, Cousin Antony, I've won the ring!" Such flash and sparkle as there was about her, with her teeth like grains of corn and her eyes dancing as she nodded and smiled at him! Poor little Gardiner! Antony paid for him again and patted him on the back. There was a pathos about the mild, sweet little face and in the timid, ineffectual arm, too short and too weak to snap the iron ring on to his sword. Bella rode till "Annie Laurie" changed to "Way down upon de Swanee river," and Fairfax's heart beat for Louisiana, and he had come to the end of his nickels. He lifted the children down. Bella now wound both arms firmly in her cousin's, and clung to him.