“Oh, because it would have spoiled all the fun; I was so afraid daddy would tell you that I made him promise not to say a word; and nobody else had seen it except Mr. Morris, and he said torture couldn't drag it out of him. That old Major that Uncle Peter thinks so much of came near spoiling the surprise, but Aunt Felicia said she would take care of him in the back of the house--and she did; and I mounted guard at the top of the stairs before anybody could get hold of you. Isn't it too lovely?--and, do you know, there are real live frogs in that pond and you can hear them croak? And now tell me about daddy, and how he gets on without me.” But Jack was not ready yet to talk about daddy, or the work, or anything that concerned Corklesville and its tunnel--the transition had been too sudden and too startling. To be fired from a gun loaded with care, hard work and anxiety--hurled through hours of winter travel and landed at a dinner-table next some charming young woman, was an experience which had occurred to him more than once in the past two years. But to be thrust still further into space until he reached an Elysium replete with whispering fountains, flowering vines and the perfume of countless blossoms--the whole tucked away in a cosey arbor containing a seat for two--AND NO MORE--and this millions of miles away, so far as he could see, from the listening ear or watchful eye of mortal man or woman--and with Ruth, too--the tips of whose fingers were so many little shrines for devout kisses--that was like having been transported into Paradise. “Oh, please let me look around a little,” he begged at last. “And this is why you love to come here?” “Yes--wouldn't you?” “I would not live anywhere else if I could--and it has just the air of summer--and it feels like a summer's night, too--as if the moon was coming up somewhere.” Ruth's delight equalled his own; she must show him the new tulips just sprouting, taking down a lantern so that he could see the better; and he must see how the jessamine was twisted in and out the criss-cross slats of the trellis, so that the flowers bloomed both outside and in; and the little gully in the flagging of the pavement through which ran the overflow of the tiny pond--till the circuit of the garden was made and they were again seated on the dangerous bench, with a cushion tucked behind her beautiful shoulders.