She continued to chatter, and, while thus keeping his glance away
from herself, she detached the forlorn bouquet of dead violets
from her dress and laid it gently beside the one she had carried.

The latter already reposed in the obscurity selected for it at
the base of one of the box-trees.

Then she was abruptly silent.

"You certainly are a funny girl," Dowling remarked. "You say you
don't want to talk about anything at all, and all of a sudden you
break out and talk a blue streak; and just about the time I begin
to get interested in what you're saying you shut off! What's the
matter with girls, anyhow, when they do things like that?"

"I don't know; we're just queer, I guess."

"I say so! Well, what'll we do NOW? Talk, or just sit?"

"Suppose we just sit some more."

"Anything to oblige," he assented. "I'm willing to sit as long
as you like."

But even as he made his amiability clear in this matter, the
peace was threatened--his mother came down the corridor like a
rolling, ominous cloud. She was looking about her on all sides,
in a fidget of annoyance, searching for him, and to his dismay
she saw him. She immediately made a horrible face at his
companion, beckoned to him imperiously with a dumpy arm, and