saw that they evidently had not come to visit him.

They had stopped half-way down the avenue, and climbed up on a rustic
seat to rest.

The dog sat motionless about two minutes, his red tongue hanging out as
if he were completely exhausted.

Suddenly he gave a spring, and bounded away through the tall blue grass.
He was back again in a moment, with a stick in his mouth. Standing
up with his fore paws in the lap of his little mistress, he looked so
wistfully into her face that she could not refuse this invitation for a
romp.

The Colonel chuckled as they went tumbling about in the grass to find
the stick which the child repeatedly tossed away.

He hitched his chair along to the other end of the porch as they kept
getting farther away from the avenue.

It had been many a long year since those old locust-trees had seen a
sight like that. Children never played any more under their dignified
shadows.

Time had been (but they only whispered this among themselves on rare
spring days like this) when the little feet chased each other up and
down the long walk, as much at home as the pewees in the beeches.

Suddenly the little maid stood up straight, and began to sniff the air,
as if some delicious odour had blown across the lawn.