nd THEM so much;
but I do the other things, 'specially the weeds. They were so much
prettier than the things I had to let grow, 'most always."

Miss Holbrook laughed.

"Well, they were; and really" persisted the boy, in answer to the
merriment in her eyes; "now wouldn't it be nice to be like the sundial,
and forget everything the sun didn't shine on? Would n't you like it?
Isn't there anything YOU want to forget?"

Miss Holbrook sobered instantly. The change in her face was so very
marked, indeed, that involuntarily David looked about for something
that might have cast upon it so great a shadow. For a long minute she
did not speak; then very slowly, very bitterly, she said aloud--yet as
if to herself:--

"Yes. If I had my way I'd forget them every one--these hours; every
single one!"

"Oh, Lady of the Roses!" expostulated David in a voice quivering with
shocked dismay. "You don't mean--you can't mean that you don't have
ANY--sun!"

"I mean just that," bowed Miss Holbrook wearily, her eyes on the somber
shadows of the pool; "just that!"

David sat stunned, confounded. Across the marble steps and the terraces
the shadows lengthened, and David watched them as the sun dipped behind
the tree-tops. They seemed to make more vivid the chill and the gloom
of the lady's words--more real the day that had no sun. After a time
the boy picked up his violin and began to play, softly, and at first
with evident hesitation. Even when his touch became more confident,
there was still in the music a questioning appeal that seemed to find
no answer--an appeal that even the player himself could not have
explained.

For long minutes the young woman and the boy sat thus in the twilight.
Then suddenly the woman got to her feet.

"Come, come, boy, what can I be thinking of?" she cried sharply. "I
must go in and you must go home. Good-night." And she swept across the
grass to the path that led toward the house.

CHAPTER XI

JACK AND JILL

David was tempted to go for a second visit to his Lady of the Roses,
but something he could not define held him back. The lady was in his
mind almost constantly, however; and very vivid to him was the picture
of the garden, though always it was as he had seen it last with the
hush and shadow of twilight, and with the lady's face gloomily turned
toward the sunless pool. David could not forget that for her there were
no hours to count; she had said it herself. He could not understand how
this