Her long dark skirts were sweeping the autumn grass at sunset as she paced back and forth under the red-gold tents of the maples. It was a row of young trees she had planted to grace a certain turf walk at the top of the low wall that divided, by a drop of a few feet, the west lawn at Stone Ridge from the meadow where the beautiful Alderneys were pastured. The maples turned purple as the light faded out of their tops and struck flat across the meadow, making the grass vivid as in spring. Two spots of color moved across it slowly--a young woman capped and aproned, urging along a little trotting child. Down the path of their united shadows they came, and the shadows had reached already the dividing wall. The waiting smile was sweet upon the grandmother's features; her face was transformed like the meadow into a memory of spring. The child saw her, and waved to her with something scarlet which he held in his free hand. She admired the stride of his brown legs above their crumpled socks, the imperishable look of health on his broad, sweet glowing face. She lifted him high in her embrace and bore him up the hill, his dusty shoes dangling against her silk front breadths, his knees pressed tight against her waist, and over her shoulder he flourished the scarlet cardinal flower. “Where have you been with him so long?” she asked the nursemaid. “Only up in the lane, as far as the three gates, ma'am.” “Then where did he get this flower?” “Oh,” said the pretty Irish girl, half scared by her tone, and tempted to prevaricate. “Why--he must have picked it, I guess.” “Not in the lane. It's a swamp-flower. It doesn't grow anywhere within four miles of the lane!” “It must have been the old man gev it him then,” said the maid. “Is it unhealthy, ma'am? I tried to get it from him, but he screamed and fussed so.” “What old man do you mean?” “Why, him that was passin' up the lane. I didn't see him till he was clean by--and Middy had the flower. I don't know where in the world he could have got it, else, for we wasn't one step out of the lane, was we, Middy! That's the very truth.” “But where were you when strangers were giving him flowers?” “Why, sure, ma'am, I was only just a step away be the fence, having a word with one o' the boys. I was lookin' in the field, speakin' to him and he was lookin' at me with me back to the lane. 'There's the old man again,' he says, shiftin' his eye. I turned me round and there, so he was, but he was by and walkin' on up the lane. And Middy had the flower. He wouldn't be parted from it and squeezed it so tight I thought the juice might be bad on his hands, and he promised he'd not put it to his mouth. I kep' my eye on him. Ah, the nasty, na-asty flower! Give it here to Katy till I throw it!” “There's no harm in the flower. But there is harm in strangers making up to him when your back is turned. Don't you know the dreadful things we read in the papers?”