"Well, a lot of 'em came from China. Miss Murray had a great-uncle who was a sea-captain. He used to go on them long whaling voyages. He brought them to her different times. Miss Murray had played with them when she was a child, and so she liked to have little Cherry play with them. Sometimes they'd all go out to the Dew Pond--Miss Murray, Mr. Monroe, Mr. Gale, Mr. Lewis, and spend a whole afternoon laying them out in little towns--jess about as you've got 'em there. There was two little places on the shore that Miss Murray had all cut down, so's the bushes wouldn't be too tall. They useter call the pond the Pacific Ocean. One of them cleared places was the China coast and the other the Japanese coast. They'd stay there for hours, floating little boats back and forth from China to Japan. And how they'd laugh! I useter listen to their voices coming through the window. But then, the house was always full of laughter. It began at seven o'clock in the morning, when they got up, and it never stopped until--after midnight sometimes--when they went to bed. Oh, it was such a gay place in those days." Lindsay arose and stretched. But the stretching did not seem so much an expression of fatigue or drowsiness as the demand of his spirit for immediate activity of some sort. He sat down again instantly. Under his downcast lids, his eyes were bright. "These walls are soaked with laughter," he remarked. "Yes," Mrs. Spash seemed to understand. "But there was tears too and plenty of them--in the last years." "I suppose there were," Lindsay agreed. He did not speak for a moment; nor did Mrs. Spash. There came a silence so concentrated that the sunlight poured into it tangible gold. Then, outside a thick white cloud caught the sun in its woolly net. The world gloomed again. "She's sad still," Lindsay dropped in absent comment. "Yes," Mrs. Spash agreed. "I wonder what she wants?" Lindsay addressed this to himself. His voice was so low that perhaps Mrs. Spash did not hear it. At any rate she made no answer. Another silence came. Mrs. Spash finished her dusting. But she lingered. Lindsay still sat at the table; but his eyes had left the little villages arranged there. They went through the door and gazed out into the brilliant patch of sunlight on the grass. There spread under his eyes a narrow stretch of lawn, all sun-touched velvet; beyond a big crescent of garden. Low-growing zinnias in futuristic colors, high phlox in pastel colors; higher, Canterbury bells, deep blue; highest of all, hollyhocks, wine red. Beyond stretched further expanses of lawn. One tall, wide wine-glass elm spread a perfect circle of emerald shade. One low, thick copper-beech dropped an irregular splotch of luminous shadow. Beyond all this ran the gray, lichened stone wall. And beyond the stone wall came unredeemed jungle. Mrs. Spash began, all over again, to dust and to arrange the scanty furniture. After a while she spoke. "Mr. Lindsay--" Lindsay started abruptly.