wouldn't occur again. After that he was softened a little,
but he went off muttering to himself, and that evening he dug up all
the new tulips and threw them over the fence. We saw him do it, but we
didn't dare say anything."

"Oh no," echoed the other lady; "if you had you might have lost him."

"Exactly. And I don't think we could possibly get another man like him;
at least, not on this side of the water."

* * * * *

"But come," said Mr. Newberry, after he had finished adjusting the
gravel with his foot, "there are Mrs. Newberry and the girls on the
verandah. Let's go and join them."

A few minutes later Mr. Spillikins was talking with Mrs. Newberry and
Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown, and telling Mrs. Newberry what a beautiful
house she had. Beside them stood Philippa Furlong, and she had her arm
around Dulphemia's waist; and the picture that they thus made, with
their heads close together, Dulphemia's hair being golden and
Philippa's chestnut-brown, was such that Mr. Spillikins had no eyes for
Mrs. Newberry nor for Castel Casteggio nor for anything. So much so
that he practically didn't see at all the little girl in green that
stood unobtrusively on the further side of Mrs. Newberry. Indeed,
though somebody had murmured her name in introduction, he couldn't have
repeated it if asked two minutes afterwards. His eyes and his mind were
elsewhere.

But hers were not.

For the Little Girl in Green looked at Mr. Spillikins with wide eyes,
and when she looked at him she saw all at once such wonderful things
about him as nobody had ever seen before.

For she could see from the poise of his head how awfully clever he was;
and from the way he stood with his hands in his side pockets she could
see how manly and brave he must be; and of course there was firmness
and strength written all over him. In short, she saw as she looked such
a Peter Spillikins as truly never existed, or could exist--or at least
such a Peter Spillikins as no one else in the world had ever suspected
before.

All in a moment she was ever so glad that she accepted Mrs. Newberry's
invitation to Castel Casteggio and hadn't been afraid to come. For the
Little Girl in Green, whose Christian name was Norah, was only what is
called a poor relation of Mrs. Newberry, and her father was a person of
no account whatever, who didn't belong to the Mausoleum Club or to any
other club, and who lived, with Norah, on a street that nobody who was
a