"Objection overruled," she returned. "That's what they used to say
in court when my father had his famous right-of-way case with Lord
Piffle of Doom; and from what I remember there didn't seem any
repartee to it."

"There certainly isn't one from me," I said.

"Let's go," she said.

There didn't seem any end to that park, and we walked and walked
and rested once or twice under the deep shade, and took in a
mouldy pavilion in white marble with broken windows, and a Temple
of Love that dated back to the sixteenth century, and rowed on an
ornamental water in a real gondola that leaked like sixty, and
landed on a rushy island where there was a sun-dial and a stone
seat that the Druids or somebody had considerately placed there in
the year one, and talked of course, and grew confidential, until
finally I was calling her Verna (which was her pet name) and
telling her how the other fellow had married my best girl, while
she spoke most beautifully and sensibly about love, and the way
the old families were dying out because they had set greater store
on their lands than on their hearts, and altogether with what she
said and what I said, and what was understood, we passed from
acquaintance to friendship, and from friendship to the verge of
something even nearer. Even the Uncle Tom hound fell under the
spell of our new-found intimacy and condescended to lick my hand
of his own volition, which Verna said he had never done before
except to the butcher, and winked a bloodshot eye when I remarked
he was too big for the island and ought to go back with me to a