lounging on his elbows, looking rather mournfully into his half-
emptied pitcher, when he heard a laugh across the little garden.
Clara, in her riding habit, was standing at the back door of the
house, under the grapevine trellis that old Joe had grown there
long ago. Nils rose.

"Come out and keep your father and me company. We've been
gossiping all afternoon. Nobody to bother us but the flies."

She shook her head. "No, I never come out here any more. Olaf
doesn't like it. I must live up to my position, you know."

"You mean to tell me you never come out and chat with the boys, as
you used to? He has tamed you! Who keeps up these
flower-beds?"

"I come out on Sundays, when father is alone, and read the
Bohemian papers to him. But I am never here when the bar is open.
What have you two been doing?"

"Talking, as I told you. I've been telling him about my
travels. I find I can't talk much at home, not even to Eric."

Clara reached up and poked with her riding-whip at a white
moth that was fluttering in the sunlight among the vine leaves. "I
suppose you will never tell me about all those things."

"Where can I tell them? Not in Olaf's house, certainly.
What's the matter with our talking here?" He pointed persuasively
with his hat to the bushes and the green table, where the flies