"I think I should despise a feeble, vacillating Hercules most of all--a burly, assuming sort of person, who could be made a tool of, and led to do what he knew to be mean and wrong." "You must despise a great many people then." "No, I do not. Honestly, Mr. Gregory, I have no right to despise any one. I was only giving the reverse of my ideal man. But I assure you I share too deeply in humanity's faults to be very critical." "I am delighted to hear, Miss Walton, that you share in our fallen humanity, for I was beginning to doubt it, and you can well understand that I should be dreadfully uncomfortable in the presence of perfection." "If you could escape all other sources of discomfort as surely as this one, you would be most happy," replied Annie, with heightened color. "I shall ever think you are satirical when you speak in such style." "A truce, Miss Walton; only, in mercy to my poor mortality, be as human as you can. Though you seem to suspect me of a low estimate of your sex, I much prefer women to saints and Madonnas. I am going to look for the burr." This was adroitness itself on the part of Gregory, for, of all things, sensible Annie, conscious of faults and many struggles, did not wish to give the impression that she thought herself approaching perfection. And yet he had managed to make her sensitive on that point, and given her a strong motive to relax strict rules of duty, and act "like other people," as he would say. Jeff's limber pole was now doing effective service. With many a soft thud upon the sward and leaves the burrs rained around, while the detached chestnuts rattled down like hail. The children were careering about this little tempest of Jeff's manufacture in a state of wild glee, dodging the random burrs, and snatching what nuts they could in safety on the outskirts of the prickly shower. At last the tree was well thrashed, and bad the appearance of a school-boy bully who, after bristling with threats and boasts for a long time, suddenly meets his master and is left in a very meek and plucked condition. But the moment Jeff's pole ceased its sturdy strokes there was a rush for the spoils, the children awakening the echoes with their exclamations of delight as they found the ground covered with what was more precious to them than gold. Even Gregory's sluggish pulses tingled and quickened at the well-remembered scene, and he felt a little of their excitement. For the moment he determined to be a boy again, and running into the charmed circle, picked away as fast as any of them till his physical weakness painfully reminded him that his old tireless activity had passed away, perhaps forever.