"I used to lie on an old sofa in the dining-room on hot afternoons, waiting for it to get cool, reading some travel book, eating summer apples, and listening to Win and Thea practicing duets in the parlor. Lord, I can hear 'em now! I'd look out at the brick walls, hot, you know, in the sun, and the pear tree, with the nurse rocking Babe under it, and old Annie shelling peas by the kitchen door, and it all seemed so comfortable--" His eyes were half closed. The children listened dreamily, huddled against him; low red rays crept down from the west-bound sun and struck the little pond to copper, the nickel dishes to silver, the lady's skirt to a peach-colored glory; a little sudden breeze set the red bottle tinkling between the stones. But to the group entranced with memories so vivid that reality blurred before them, the peach and copper glories were ripe fruit against an old brick wall, the tinkle echoed from an old piano in a dim, green-shuttered parlor, and the soft snoring of the General, asleep on the silk motor coat, was the drowsy breathing of a contented little fellow in knickerbockers dreaming in a window seat. "Did you ever go to Atlantic City?" The lady's voice woke them as a gong wakes a sleeper. "Now that's my idea of the country!" He stared at her vaguely. "But--but that's no place for children," he protested. He had hardly grown up at that moment, himself. She shrugged her shoulders. "It's not exactly necessary to have six children, you know," she said, "and then you needn't be worried over a place for them, and can afford to think a little about the place you'd like for yourself." The sun was in her eyes and she missed the look in his as he jumped up from the astonished group and seized her wrist. "Christine, you simply shan't talk that way!" he said. "I don't know what's the matter with you to-day--why are you so different? Are you trying to tease me? Because I might as well tell you right now that you're succeeding a little too well." The pink parasol dropped between them. Her eyes met his squarely, though her voice shook a little. "Let my wrist go, Mr. Armstrong," she said, "you hurt me. I assure you I'm not different at all. If you really want to know what the matter with me is, let me ask you if you saw anything out of the way before your friends there interfered?" she pointed to the little group he had left. "We seemed to be getting on very well then." His face fell, and she went on more quickly and with less controlled tones. "You are the one that is different! I have always been just the same--just exactly the same! Ask anybody if I've changed--ask aunty! 'Tina has the best temper of any girl I know,' aunty always says. But its just as she warned me. Aunty always knows--she's seen lots and lots of people and plenty of swells, too--it isn't as if you were the only one, Mr. Armstrong!" He looked curiously at the flushed, lovely face; curiously, as though he had never really studied it before.