ver knew! Do you like it over here, Miss
Tucker, or are you homesick now that your friend is in America?"

"Oh, I'm never homesick; for the reason that I have never had any home
since I was ten years old, when I was left an orphan. I haven't any
deep roots in New York; it's like the ocean, too big to love. I
respect and admire the ocean, but I love a little river. You know the
made-over aphorism: 'The home is where the hat is'? For 'hat' read
'trunk,' and you have my case, precisely."

"That's because you are absurdly, riotously young! It won't suit you
forever."

"Does anything suit one forever?" asked Tommy frivolously, not
cynically, but making Appleton a trifle uncomfortable nevertheless.
"Anything except singing, I mean? Perhaps you feel the same way about
writing? You haven't told me anything about your work, and I've
confided my past history, present prospects, and future aspirations to
you!"

"There's not so much to say. It is good work, and it is growing
better. I studied architecture at the Beaux-Arts. I do art-criticism,
and I write about buildings chiefly. That would seem rather dull to a
warbler like you."

"Not a bit. Doesn't somebody say that architecture is frozen music?"

"I don't get as immediate response to my work as you do to yours."

"No, but you never had sixpences and pennies put into your plate! Now
give me my books, please. I'll go in at the upper gate alone, and run
upstairs to my room. You enter by the lower one and go through the
lounge, where the guests chiefly congregate waiting for the opening of
the dining-room. Au revoir!"

When Tommy opened her bedroom door she elevated her pretty,
impertinent little nose and sniffed the air. It was laden with a
delicate perfume that came from a huge bunch of mignonette on the
table. It was long-stemmed, fresh, and moist, loosely bound together,
and every one of its tiny brown blossoms was sending out fragrance
into the room. It did not need Fergus Appleton's card to identify the
giver, but there it was.

"What a nice, kind, understanding person he is! And how cheerful it
makes life to have somebody from your own country taking an interest
in you, and liking your singing, and hating those beastly pennies!"
And Tommy, quickly merging artist in woman, slipped on a coatee of
dull-green crepe over her old black taffeta, and taking down her hat
with the garland of mignonette from the shelf in her closet, tucked
some of the green sprays in her be