l about that till this morning."

"There's the fly!" cried Harold suddenly. "I can hear it scrunching on
the gravel."

Then for the first time we turned and stared one another in the face.

*****

The fly and its contents had finally disappeared through the gate: the
rumble of its wheels had died away; and no flag floated defiantly in
the sun, no cannons proclaimed the passing of a dynasty. From out the
frosted cake of our existence Fate had cut an irreplaceable segment;
turn which way we would, the void was present. We sneaked off in
different directions, mutually undesirous of company; and it seemed
borne in upon me that I ought to go and dig my garden right over, from
end to end. It didn't actually want digging; on the other hand, no
amount of digging could affect it, for good or for evil; so I worked
steadily, strenuously, under the hot sun, stifling thought in action. At
the end of an hour or so, I was joined by Edward.

"I've been chopping up wood," he explained, in a guilty sort of way,
though nobody had called on him to account for his doings.

"What for?" I inquired, stupidly. "There's piles and piles of it chopped
up already."

"I know," said Edward; "but there's no harm in having a bit over.
You never can tell what may happen. But what have you been doing all
this digging for?"

"You said it was going to rain," I explained, hastily; "so I thought
I'd get the digging done before it came. Good gardeners always tell you
that's the right thing to do."

"It did look like rain at one time," Edward admitted; "but it's passed
off now. Very queer weather we're having. I suppose that's why I've felt
so funny all day."

"Yes, I suppose it's the weather," I replied. "_I've_ been feeling funny
too."

The weather had nothing to do with it, as we well knew. But we would
both have died rather than have admitted the real reason.

THE BLUE ROOM

That nature has her moments of sympathy with man has been noted often
enough,--and generally as a new discovery; to us, who had never known
any other condition of things, it seemed entirely right and fitting that
the wind sang and sobbed in the poplar tops, and in the lulls of
it, sudden spirts of rain spattered the already dusty roads, on that
blusterous March day when Edward and I awaited, on the station platform,
the arrival of the new tutor. Needless to say, this arrangement had been
planned by an aunt, from some fond idea that our shy, innocent young
nature