a play to them as the apple-tree housekeeping had been.

So Mr. Ferguson might have spared himself the unpleasant
interview with Blair's mother. He recognized this himself before
long, and was even able to relax into a difficult smile when Mrs.
Richie ventured a mild pleasantry on the subject. For Mrs. Richie
had spoken to Blair, and understood the situation so well that
she could venture a pleasantry. She had sounded him one evening
in the darkness of her narrow garden.

David was not at home, and Blair was glad of the chance to wait
for him--so long as Mrs. Richie let him lounge on the grass at
her feet. His adoration of David's mother, begun in his
childhood, had strengthened with his years; perhaps because she
was all that his own mother was not.

"Blair," she said, "of course you and I both realize that
Elizabeth is only a child, and you are entirely too wise to talk
seriously about being engaged to her. She is far too young for
that sort of thing. Of course _you_ understand that?"

And Blair, feeling as though the sword of manhood had been laid
on his shoulder, and instantly forgetting the smaller pride of
being "engaged," said in a very mature voice, "Oh, certainly
_I_ understand,"

If, in the dusk of stars and fireflies, with the fragrance of
white stocks blossoming near the stone bench that circled the old
hawthorn-tree in the middle of the garden--if at that moment Mrs.
Richie had demanded Elizabeth's head upon a charger, Blair would