"No more have I," said Mrs. Chester' with a sigh. "My poor boy! My poor boy!" And the mother's heart went out across the seas to the reprobate. As she was stepping into the coach she said, "When the Duchess gets better it'd be a fine thing if you could take her into the country for a day, and perhaps Sally could go along with her. You've no idea what good a mouthful of free air can do, especially to children who get but little of it." "Seth Dumbrick," said Seth to himself, as he walked home, "you're coming to something. You go on like this, and in time you won't know yourself. To think that you, who never had a sweetheart, should be taken in as you're being taken in by a parcel of women and children who are no more bone of your bone or flesh of your flesh than that donkey is. Stop a bit though. Some wiseacres have set it down in black and white that men and donkeys are shoots off one tree. Perhaps that accounts for it." Now that the Duchess was in a fair way of recovery, and could do nothing to amuse herself, she drew upon Seth's resources for the agreeable passing away of the idle hours, and he, with his Bible on his knee, would relate to her in a familiar way such stories as he thought would best please her. Deeming Solomon a tempting theme, he related the history of that wise king with a curious mingling of fact and fancy and shrewd observation. The story of Solomon's life and deeds seemed to possess a peculiar fascination for the Duchess, and she bound Seth to it for three consecutive nights. "That was a grand place King Solomon built," said the Duchess. "Where is it?" "Nowhere; it was destroyed, and I'm told the Jews go into mourning every year because of its destruction." "Does that do any good?" said the Duchess. "Not a bit." "What came of all the gold?" "Don't know; dare say the Jews got a lot of it on the sly." "It was all gold, wasn't it? It says so there." "Yes," said Seth, reading from parts, "'So Solomon overlaid the house within with pure gold;' then again--'The whole house he overlaid with gold until he had finished all the house; and the whole altar that was by the oracle he overlaid with gold.' Why, the candlesticks, and the spoons, and the snuffers to snuff the candles, and the very hinges of the doors--everything was gold. And besides, there was such heaps of precious stones that they hardly knew where to stick 'em." "There couldn't have been any poor people there," said Sally. "I'm not so sure, Sal. In the middle of it all there's talk of famine, and pestilence, and blasting. It's pretty much of a muddle, it seems to me." "I want to know," said the Duchess later in the night. "In that temple, wasn't there a garden?" "I don't find mention of any. I should say not, or if there was, it wasn't worth mentioning." "No flowers?" "Not that I know of." "Wasn't there no birds?" asked Sally. "Yes, gold ones, and there's flowers of gold and cherubims of gold. All gold and silver and precious stones."