She listened with her eyes fixed upon him and her lips a little apart. "What did you think when you first saw me?" she asked, softly. He hesitated, and then laughed. "I don’t think I thought anything in particular," he said. "That’s what is so extraordinary. What did you think when you saw me?" It was the children’s pretty game. "I like you. When did you begin to like me?" But she was not ready to tell him that yet. Or perhaps she might have told him, if he had acknowledged to some emotion at the first sight of her. "I was very glad to see somebody who could tell me where I was," she said. "I had heard of you, you know, from Mrs. Ivimey; but somehow I didn’t think of you as you till you told me your name." What had she heard of him? She wouldn’t tell him that, either, or at least not all that she had heard about him; but he was so unaware of the estimation in which he was held by the people about him that he did not divine that she was keeping something back. What Mrs. Ivimey had said of "the folks at the Castle," generally gave them something to talk about. She wanted to hear all about his life and those among whom he spent it; and he talked about himself as he had never talked to anybody before. His desire was to bring her into it all. He told her a great deal about his happy childhood, and some of the secrets that he had cherished. He told her about the stories he had made up for himself, and, with a little hesitation, the one about the garden and the flowers, and the end of it. "I was terribly ashamed," he said, "oh, for years afterwards. I’m not sure I haven’t been ashamed of it right up till now. Now I’ve made a clean breast of it—to you—I don’t mind so much. I must have been a horribly vain little boy. It used to distress me that my hair wasn’t very black and very smooth. I used to pray that it might be made so." Her eyes rested upon his fair close-cropped head. He was looking down and did not see the look in them. "I’m glad your prayer wasn’t answered," she said. "But I think you must have been a very dear little boy. I wish I had known you then. What were the violas like in your story about the flowers? Or didn’t they come in?" "Yes, they did," he said, looking up at her. "They were different from the pansies—gentler and rather shy. They were never naughty." "How old were they? Grownup?" "No; children—with dark eyes and a lot of dark hair all about their faces." "Were they like any little girls you had seen?" "I don’t think so. I think they must have been rather like you were then." "My eyes were dark, and my hair was loose on my shoulders. Perhaps something put it into your head that you would know a Viola some day." "Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes Wood-brown pools of Paradise." He said it gently, looking into her eyes. She was startled for a moment. "You know it, then?" she said.