Ernest waited a moment before he answered, for something swayed him that was stronger than his will, impelling him to cry out, “No, not that!” And then he whispered back, “Yes, Boy, from now on;” and clasping the child in a way that almost hurt, he kissed him on the forehead. Thus was the compact sealed. The tension over, the Boy, who could not realize what the other’s promise meant, speedily became a child again, and freeing himself, cried, “Now I shall be here to see the Thrashers hatch out; there’s four eggs in the nest in last year’s pea brush down by the fence; do let us go over and see them, Daddy; if we don’t poke them, they won’t mind.” Then, as they looked across the fields, the Boy laid his cheek against the man’s, and nestling, murmured in a voice of deep content: “Isn’t it a lovely, lovely day, and everything is so happy. Listen: now I can hear the wind talking in the grass, just as you say it talks to you.” * * * * * The summer hurried on and slipped away, as it has a way of doing after the rose and strawberry have held their garden carnival, where each crowns the other. In July the Marches went abroad. Ernest had not broken his habit of dropping in at his neighbour’s house, but he had seen less and less of Eileen, who, very naturally, was absorbed in her preparations and the visit of the young woman who was to be her companion. Before leaving, Eileen had sent Ernest a photograph of herself taken in the filmy summer gown she had last worn. Why she did it, she herself could not have told; neither could Ernest have fathomed her motive if he had tried. He was about to slip the card into a drawer, then hesitated, and taking from his mantel-shelf in the living-room a picture of Eileen at sixteen, plump, wide-eyed, and serene, for which, at the time, he had carved a somewhat clumsy frame of tulip wood, he substituted the new picture of the lovely, graceful woman with birdlike poise of head and expression, for the old, placing it on his desk. The Boy, coming in, spied the photograph, and always alert for new impressions, climbed on a chair to look at it, crying, “Oh, Daddy, isn’t this Eileen pretty? She looks up at me just like Pandora peeping up from the box, or a wood-thrush when it’s going to sing. She’s prettier than the Sleeping Beauty in my book. I want to take her up to live on our bureau and be our fairy Princess; may I?” And the man, wishing to say No, as in many other things the boy asked, answered, “Yes.” * * * * *