Reifferscheid already filled the side-door. Evidently inspection was the first and only formality demanded of the guest at the cottage. Paula followed him up a tiny gravel path to the rim of the top pond--a saucer of cement, eighteen inches deep and seven or eight feet across. It was filled with pond-weed and nelumbo foliage. Gold fish and stickle-backs played in the shadowed water. "It isn't the time of year, you know," he said apologetically. "The lilies are through blossoming, and in a week or two, I'll have to take my fishes back to winter-quarters. You see my water supply comes from Silver Lake. The great main empties here." (Paula followed his finger to the nozzle of a hose that hung over the rim of cement on the top pond.) "The stream overflows in Montmorency Falls yonder,"--(this, a trickle down the gravel to the second pond)--"from which, you can hear the roar of the cataracts into the lower lake, which waters the lands of plenty all about." His look of surprise and disappointment at her laughter was irresistible. "The saurians are all in the depths, but you can see some of my snails," he went on. "You'd be surprised how important my herd of snails is in the economy of this whole lake country." He picked up a pebble from the edge of the water, pointing out the green slime that covered it. "These are spores of a very influential vegetable, called _algæ_, which spreads like cholera and vegetates anywhere in water that is not of torrential temperament. Without my snails, the whole system would be a thick green soup in a month. It's getting a little dark to see the stickle-back nests. They domesticate very curiously. Next year, I'll have a fountain.... The second-tank contains a frail, northern variety of water-hyacinths, some rock bass, and a turtle or two. Below are the cattails and ferns and mosses. In the summer, that lower pond is a jungle, but the lilies and lotuses up here are really choice when in blossom. The overflow of water rejoices the bugs and posies generally. Annie likes the yard-flowers." Paula would not have dared to say how enchantingly these toy-lakes and lily-beds had adjusted, in her mind, to the nature of the big man beside her, whose good word was valued by every sincere and important literary worker in the country. Tim Reifferscheid turning out his tremendous tasks in New York, would never be quite the same to her again, since she had seen him playing with his hose in his own back yard, and heard him talk about his snails and lilies, and the land posies that Sister Annie liked. Down-town, he had always stimulated her, but here with his toy-engineering and playful watersheds, he was equally bracing and just as admirable. Darkness was covering them. "I must see it all again," she said. "I want to come when the lilies are blossoming. I could watch the fishes and things--for hours. Really, I will never call it a dug-out again." She saw him grinning in the dusk.