“You have not done so ill, boy, as it is,” said Stephen, a little huskily, as he sat looking straight before him down to the sea. The tide was coming in along the sandy beach and past the rocky headlands. It must have been that he likened it in his mind to the rising tide of the cause of Liberty, coming so slowly but not to be stopped or stayed by the hand of any man. He must have wondered whether that cause would touch its high-water mark while he still lived. “And when the Spring came, Miles, were you not happy then?” questioned Clotilde. Miles’ eyes danced, while his face and tone changed so completely that Stephen turned sharply to look at him in startled wonder. “Ah, you never saw such a Spring as that which comes to Pennsylvania,” he exclaimed, “not the headlong season we have here, when one week the meadows are white with snow and the next are as green as in midsummer, but a long, warm, slow-coming Spring when the little, brown, wooded hills turn green so gradually that you scarce can see the change from day to day, when the sunny banks are thicker with blue violets than with grass, and when a strange wild herb grows thick in the meadows and smells sharp and sweet when the grazing horses trample it. Our Spring comes in a great breathtaking wave, but theirs like some rippling tide that breaks and rises a little and breaks again.” “It is so we have Spring in England,” said Gerald. He, as well as Stephen seemed to have observed the change in Miles’ manner, and was regarding him with keen curiosity. Clotilde alone seemed not to notice anything unusual, so absorbed was she in what he said. “I can never forget,” went on Miles, “a meadow all green and yellow with new grasses and a tiny stream flowing through the midst, its banks blue-grey with masses of flowers called Quaker Ladies. Such sweet, gay-hearted little blossoms, growing in thousands beside the marshy bank—” He suddenly caught Stephen’s eye fixed upon him and stopped in a scarlet agony of embarrassment. Getting up from his seat he announced hastily that he must go, that his time was short in Hopewell and there was much to do. “Then come first to the house with me,” said Stephen. “I have a letter for General Washington written some days since, and have been vainly seeking a messenger.” As they walked up the path together he once more regarded the boy oddly. “It seems to me,” he observed, “that I never before heard a bluff soldier talk so fondly of blossoms and meadows and—Quaker Ladies.” He was unkind enough to laugh aloud as Miles floundered vainly in his effort to explain. “But you do not understand,” the poor youth began vainly to protest in stammering explanation, “that the Quaker Ladies are flowers—that grow beside brooks—”