laughing at me for being romantic. He's one that's looking for
truth and reality, he says, and he's terrible down on the kind of
poetry I like myself."

She smiled. "They all talk so. But you, my friend Dickson"
(she pronounced the name in two staccato syllables ever so prettily),
"you are different. Tell me about yourself."

"I'm just what you see--a middle-aged retired grocer."

"Grocer?" she queried. "Ah, yes, epicier. But you are a very
remarkable epicier. Mr. Heritage I understand, but you and those
little boys--no. I am sure of one thing--you are not a romantic.
You are too humorous and--and--I think you are like Ulysses,
for it would not be easy to defeat you."

Her eyes were kind, nay affectionate, and Dickson experienced a
preposterous rapture in his soul, followed by a sinking, as he
realized how far the job was still from being completed.

"We must be getting on, Mem," he said hastily, and the two plunged
again into the heather.

The Ayr road was crossed, and the fir wood around the Mains
became visible, and presently the white gates of the entrance.
A wind-blown spire of smoke beyond the trees proclaimed that the
house was not untenanted. As they entered the drive the Scots firs
were tossing in the gale, which blew fiercely at this altitude, but,
the dwelling itself being more in the hollow, the daffodil clumps on
the lawn were but mildly fluttered.