from the noisier crowds of people not to be a strain on
Grandfather's nerves and Joy's, that nothing was said. As a matter
of fact, Grandfather thought Grandmother had bought it for her, and
Grandmother thought Grandfather had; so each said pretty things
about it to the other, without coming straight out, as their
courteous custom with each other was; and the secret was still Joy's.

By the second day Joy saw that people were beginning to find out who
Grandfather was. So she deliberately ran away. Not badly, nor far;
she only had a waiter who seemed to want to be nice to her make her
up a little packet of sandwiches, and then she took to the nearest
woods. She quite intended to be back for dinner; she wouldn't have
missed the pageant of sunburned, laughing people streaming in, for
anything; not even at the risk of being asked if she, too, wrote
poetry.

The woods gained, she leaned back against a big oak tree with a
rested sigh. There might be all the poetry in the world a half mile
off, but here you couldn't see anything but trees and more trees,
all autumn reds and browns and yellows, and the two little brown
paths that crossed near where she sat. Her blue, black-lashed eyes
rested happily on a great bough of scarlet and yellow maple leaves.

"I haven't got to say one _word_ about them," she breathed.
"_Nice_ leaves!"

Then she felt vaguely penitent; and in spite of the scenery, began
to think about Grandfather, and therefore poetry, again--so firm a
clutch has habit. There in the wonderful tingling air, with the late
sunset glimmering a little through the trees, an old poem began to