It was an afternoon of bronze leaves and sunshine, of the noisy drowsiness of wood creatures, and of the brooding splendor of September. When Marie Josephine looked back at it she always thought of sunshine between black clouds. “Shall we not have our bread and jam by the sundial, Little Mademoiselle?” Jean asked her as they turned down a path strewn with brown and gold pine needles. “Yes, that will be splendid,” she answered, and then turning, called over her shoulder: “Flambeau, where are you? We are going to the place you love the best of all, the sundial!” She swung her hat by its ribbons, throwing it up in the air and catching it now and then. She had gathered her curls together into a dark coil, which bobbed over her shoulders as she walked. “Dian is going to show us the three baby lambs to-morrow. Do you love Dian, Little Mademoiselle?” Jean asked, leaping along beside her, for she had begun to run. She nodded and when she sank down at last on a bank of moss she smiled and nodded again. “I love Dian because grandfather thought so much of him. He once said, 'Some people in this world are different and Dian is one of them!’ That is the reason that we love to hear his stories!” They sat facing the sundial. There was no place that they loved so well as this quiet nook in the heart of a dense wood. No one really knew exactly how the sundial came to be there. The story was that an ancestor had wished to be alone with time and had had this place made for himself, where he used to spend long hours writing who knows what, perhaps verses, soliloquies, essays. At any rate, the sundial still stood in the heart of the wood and the gardener kept the brush from growing too close to it. “You have not told me one fairy story since you came this time,” Jean reproached his friend as he opened the little green basket and brought out the jam and the croissants. “I told you of the noises of Paris and how I lay awake and listened to them, of how Rosanne and I went to the fancy dress ball and hid in the balcony and watched the others dance. I told you about the funny café in the old green mill and the dark woman who made us the omelette. Why do you want fairy stories when real things are so wonderful!” Jean looked so meek and contrite as he sat there on the moss bank like a little brown gnome, that Marie Josephine laughed out loud. Jean was her good comrade and dear friend, but she loved to tease him.