At a little before nine o’clock, Mr. William Sperry had departed (in a young husband’s car) for his place of business, some five miles distant in the smoky heart of the city; and not long afterward the thoughtful Bella, charmingly accoutred as a gardener, came forth with a trowel to uproot weeds that threatened a row of iris she had set out along the gravel path leading from the tiny white veranda to the white picket gate. Thus engaged, she became aware of a small presence fumbling at the latch of this gate, and she changed her position from that of one on all fours, who gropes intently in the earth, to that of one upright from the knees, but momentarily relaxed. “Do you want to come in?” she inquired, looking out from the shade of her broad hat to where the little figure in blue overalls was marked off into stripes of sunshine and shadow by the intervening pickets of the gate. “Is there something you want here, little boy?” He succeeded in operating the latch, came in, and looked attentively over her excavations. “Have you found any nice worms?” he asked. “No, I haven’t found any at all,” she said, somewhat surprised by his adjective. “But I don’t think there are any ‘nice’ worms anywhere. Worms are all pretty horrid.” “No, they ain’t,” he returned promptly and seriously. “There’s lots o’ nice worms.” “Oh, I don’t think so.” “Yes, there is.” “Oh, no.” “There is, too,” he said stubbornly and with some asperity. “Everybody knows there’s plenty of nice worms.” “Where did you get such nonsense in your head?” Bella asked, a little sharply. “Whoever told you there are nice worms?” “Well, there is!” “But what makes you think so?” she insisted. “Well——” He hesitated, then said with a conclusive air, settling the question: “My mother. I guess _she_ knows!” Bella stared at him incredulously for a moment. “What’s your name?” “My name’s George. My name’s George, the same as my papa,” he replied somewhat challengingly. “Don’t you live just across the street?” she asked. “Yes, I do.” He turned, pointing to the “George M. Sullender residence”; and Bella thought she detected a note of inherited pride in his tone as he added, “That’s where _I_ live!” “But, George, you don’t mean,” she insisted curiously;—“you don’t mean that your _mother_ told you there are nice worms? Surely not!” “My mother did,” he asserted, and then with a little caution, modified the assertion. “My mother just the _same_ as did.” “How was that?” And his reply, so unexpected by his questioner, sent a thrill of coming triumph through her. “My mother called my father a worm.” “What!” “She did,” said George. “She called him a worm over and over——” “What!” “And if he’s a worm,” George went on, stoutly, “well, I guess _he’s_ nice, isn’t he? So there got to be plenty nice worms if he’s one.” “George!” “She calls him a worm most every little while, _these_ days,” said George, expanding, and he added, in cold blood, “I like him a great deal better than what I do her.”