that the apples were almost as good as
if he had stolen them. He was giving the impression that he was an
irrepressible fellow. He was eating very slowly. It added pleasantly to
his sense of importance to feel that some one, there in the parlour, was
waiting his motion.

At length they rose. Monona flung herself upon her father. He put her
aside firmly, every inch the father. No, no. Father was occupied now.
Mrs. Deacon coaxed her away. Monona encircled her mother's waist, lifted
her own feet from the floor and hung upon her. "She's such an active
child," Lulu ventured brightly.

"Not unduly active, I think," her brother-in-law observed.

He turned upon Lulu his bright smile, lifted his eyebrows, dropped his
lids, stood for a moment contemplating the yellow tulip, and so left the
room.

Lulu cleared the table. Mrs. Deacon essayed to wind the clock. Well now.
Did Herbert say it was twenty-three to-night when it struck the half
hour and twenty-one last night, or twenty-one to-night and last night
twenty-three? She talked of it as they cleared the table, but Lulu did
not talk.

"Can't you remember?" Mrs. Deacon said at last. "I should think you
might be useful."

Lulu was lifting the yellow tulip to set it on the sill. She changed her
mind. She took the plant to the wood-shed and tumbled it with force upon
the chip-pile.

The dining-room table was laid for breakfast. The two women brought
their work and sat there. The child Monona hung miserably about,
watching the clock. Right or wrong, she was put to bed by it. She had
eight minutes more--seven--six--five--

Lulu laid down her sewing and left the room. She went to the wood-shed,
groped about in the dark, found the stalk of the one tulip flower in its
heap on the chip-pile. The tulip she fastened in her gown on her flat
chest.

Outside were to be seen the early stars. It is said that if our sun were
as near to Arcturus as we are near to our sun, the great Arcturus would
burn our sun to nothingness.

* * * * *

In the Deacons' parlour sat Bobby Larkin, eighteen. He was in pain all
over. He was come on an errand which civilisation has contrived to make
an ordeal.

Before him on the table stood a photograph of Diana Deacon, also
eighteen. He hated her with passion. At school she mocked him, aped
him, whispered about him, tortured him. For two years he had hated her.
Nights he fell asleep planning to build a great house and enga