ge her as
its servant.

Yet, as he waited, he could not keep his eyes from this photograph. It
was Di at her curliest, at her fluffiest, Di conscious of her bracelet,
Di smiling. Bobby gazed, his basic aversion to her hard-pressed by a
most reluctant pleasure. He hoped that he would not see her, and he
listened for her voice.

Mr. Deacon descended upon him with an air carried from his supper hour,
bland, dispensing. Well! Let us have it. "What did you wish to see me
about?"--with a use of the past tense as connoting something of
indirection and hence of delicacy--a nicety customary, yet unconscious.
Bobby had arrived in his best clothes and with an air of such formality
that Mr. Deacon had instinctively suspected him of wanting to join the
church, and, to treat the time with due solemnity, had put him in the
parlour until he could attend at leisure.

Confronted thus by Di's father, the speech which Bobby had planned
deserted him.

"I thought if you would give me a job," he said defencelessly.

"So that's it!" Mr. Deacon, who always awaited but a touch to be either
irritable or facetious, inclined now to be facetious. "Filling teeth?"
he would know. "Marrying folks, then?" Assistant justice or assistant
dentist--which?

Bobby blushed. No, no, but in that big building of Mr. Deacon's where
his office was, wasn't there something ... It faded from him, sounded
ridiculous. Of course there was nothing. He saw it now.

There was nothing. Mr. Deacon confirmed him. But Mr. Deacon had an idea.
Hold on, he said--hold on. The grass. Would Bobby consider taking charge
of the grass? Though Mr. Deacon was of the type which cuts its own
grass and glories in its vigour and its energy, yet in the time after
that which he called "dental hours" Mr. Deacon wished to work in his
garden. His grass, growing in late April rains, would need attention
early next month ... he owned two lots--"of course property _is_ a
burden." If Bobby would care to keep the grass down and raked ... Bobby
would care, accepted this business opportunity, figures and all, thanked
Mr. Deacon with earnestness. Bobby's aversion to Di, it seemed, should
not stand in the way of his advancement.

"Then that is checked off," said Mr. Deacon heartily.

Bobby wavered toward the door, emerged on the porch, and ran almost upon
Di returning from her tea-party at Jenny Plow's.

"Oh, Bobby! You came to see me?"

She was as fluffy, as curly, as smiling as her picture.