"Over here now, please, Lynn," said Miss Field. "When you get that done, I'll tell you what to do next. Come, Margaret, it's a little chilly here, and I don't want you to take cold." For a few moments there was quiet in the garden. A flock of pigeons hovered about Iris, taking grain from her outstretched hand, and cooing soft murmurs of content. The white dove was perched upon her shoulder, not at all disturbed by her various excursions to the source of supply. Lynn worked steadily, seemingly unconscious of the girl's scrutiny. Finally, she spoke. "I don't want any of your old vegetables," she said. "How fortunate!" "You may not have any at all--I don't believe the seeds will come up." "Perhaps not--it's quite in the nature of things." The pouter pigeon, brave in his iridescent waistcoat, perched upon her other shoulder, and Lynn straightened himself to look at her. From the first evening she had puzzled him. Her face was nearly always pale, but to-day she had a pretty colour in her cheeks and her deep, violet eyes were aglow with innocent mischief. There was a dewy sweetness about her red lips, and Lynn noted that the sheen on the pigeon's breast was like the gleam from her blue-black hair, where the sun shone upon it. She had a great mass of it, which she wore coiled on top of her small, well-shaped head. It was perfectly smooth, its riotous waves kept well in check, except at the blue-veined temples, where little ringlets clustered, unrebuked. "You should be practising," said Iris, irrelevantly. "So should you." "I don't need to." "Why not?" "Because I'm not going to play with you any more." "Why, Iris?" "Oh," she returned, with a little shrug of her shoulders, which frightened away both pigeons, "you didn't like the way I played your last accompaniment, and so I've stopped for good." Lynn thought it only a repetition of what she had said when he criticised her, and passed it over in silence. "I've already done an hour," he said, "and I'll have time for another before lunch. I can get in the other two before dark, and then I'm going for a walk. You'll come with me, won't you?" "You haven't asked me properly," she objected. Irving bowed and, in set, gallant phrases, asked Miss Temple for "the pleasure of her company." "I'm sorry," she answered, "but I'm obliged to refuse. I'm going to make some little cakes for tea--the kind you like." "Bother the cakes!" "Then," laughed Iris, "if you want me as much as that, I'll go. It's my Christian duty." From the very beginning, Aunt Peace had taught Iris the principles of dainty housewifery. Cleanliness came first--an exquisite cleanliness which was not merely a lack of dust and dirt, but a positive quality. When the old lady's keen eyes, reinforced by her strongest glasses, were unable to discern so much as a finger mark upon anything, Iris knew that it was clean, and not before.