greedy of them as they of the honey, would seize and thrust them into
the lethal chamber, in the form of a cigar-box loosely filled with
bruised laurel leaves, which hung by a strap from his shoulder.

It was for such exciting employment that Esther had once gathered laurel
leaves. And, once again, she remembered gathering them one Shakespeare's
birthday, to crown a little bust in Henry's study. The sacred head had
worn them proudly all day, and they all had a feeling that somehow
Shakespeare must know about it, and appreciate the little offering; just
as even to-day one might bring roses and myrtle, or the blood of a
maiden dove to Venus, and expect her to smile upon our affairs of
the heart.

But it was for a dearer purpose that Esther was gathering them this
morning. That coming evening Mike was to utter his first stage-words in
public. The laurel was to crown the occasion on which Mike was to make
that memorable utterance: "That's a pie as is a pie, is that there pie!"

Now while Esther was busily weaving this laurel into a wreath, Henry was
busily weaving the best words he could find into a sonnet to accompany
the wreath. When Angel duly brought him his lunch, it was finished, and
lay about on his desk in rags and tatters of composition. Angel was
going to the performance with her sisters,--for all these young people
were fond of advertising each other, and he had soon told her about
Mike,--so she was interested to hear the sonnet. Whatever other
qualities poetry may lack, the presence of generous sincerity will
always give it a certain value, to all but the merely supercilious; and
this sonnet, boyish in its touches of grandiloquence, had yet a certain
pathos of strong feeling about it.