becomes importunate, I can
deny him nothing."

He stifled a yawn.

Adrian's round face radiated triumph.

"You are a good child, after all," he said, "and you shall have jam with
your tea."

"I think I have fooled that fellow to the top of his bent," was Anthony's
silent self-gratulation.

His pulse beat high, as they walked across the park.

"How could I ever have contemplated waiting till Sunday?" he asked
himself, in a maze.

Sunday, the day after the day after to-morrow, seemed, in his present
eagerness, to belong to the dim distances of futurity.

And all the way, as they passed under the great trees, over the cool,
close turf, with its powdering of daisies and buttercups and poppies,
through alternations of warm sun and deep shadow, where sheep browsed,
and little snow-white awkward lambkins sported, and birds piped, and the
air was magical with the scent of the blossoming may,--all the way, amid
the bright and dark green vistas of lawn and glade, the summer loveliness
mixed with his anticipation of standing face to face with her, and
rendered it more poignant.

"If cats were always kittens,
And rats were always mice,
And elderberries were younger berries,
Now would n't that be nice?"--

Adrian, walking beside him, trilled joyously.

"You seem in high spirits," Anthony remarked.

"I 've been thinking of your suggestion," said Adrian.

Anthony frowned, at a loss.

"My suggestion--?"

"Yes--your suggestion that I should marry her."

Anthony stared.

"What?" he ejaculated.

"Yes," said Adrian, blandly. "I think the suggestion is decidedly a
happy one. I think I shall pay my court to her."

"_You_? Man, you 're bereft of your senses," said Anthony, with force.

"You need n't be so violent," said Adrian. "It's your own idea."

"I was making game of you--I was pulling your leg. Marry her? She would
n't look at you," said Anthony, contumelious.

"Why not, I should like to know?" Adrian haughtily enquired.

"You 're--you 're too young," Anthony reminded him.

"Too young?" mildly demurred Adrian, wide-eyed. "I 'm thirty, if I 'm a
day."

"You 're thirty-nine, if you 're a day," said Anthony. "But you 'll
never be thirty--not even when you 're forty. You breathe perennial
spring."

"I confess," said Adrian, with deliberation, "I freely confess that I am
not an effete and blase old thing, like--like one who shall be nameless.
There is a variety of fruit (the husban