inspired a single unselfish attachment until Celia came into his
life. The thing was overwhelming. His hand shook till his fork
clattered against his plate. What was he to have won the heart of a
child?

In the two hours that elapsed before their departure, he suffered
agonies of apprehension that Celia would change her mind. Scraps of
cynical comment on the fickleness of her sex, some of them dating back
to Virgil and Juvenal, flitted through his memory and stung like
gad-flies. After winning such honor, after Celia had elected to remain
with him, he felt himself unable to endure the ignominy of having her
reconsider. While Mary made the beds, and Persis packed the luncheon
in the kitchen, and the children raced about getting in one another's
way, and prolonging the preparations they were desirous of hastening,
Joel waited in a cold sweat, half realizing the absurdity of his
misgiving, but quite at its mercy. He knew that if Celia changed her
mind at the last minute and departed with the others, life would not be
worth the living.

But the elf-like little creature showed no signs of vacillation. After
rendering valuable assistance in getting the others ready, including
the feat of breaking a fruit jar containing the lemon juice and sugar,
she came and stood at Joel's side, serenely contemplative and content.
Even toward Celia Joel had never been demonstrative. But as the picnic
party took possession of the machine, and half a dozen hands waved a
farewell, he slipped his arm about the child's shoulders and drew her
to him. The day was edged with gold. The warm August sunshine seemed
to reach the very depths of his heart. He had a confused impression
that he had done life an injustice.

"Tell me a story, Uncle Joel," commanded Celia, nestling closer. "Tell
me about Miranda and Ariel and that horrid old Caliban." For to reduce
Shakespeare to the juvenile comprehension had been one of the tasks
imposed on Joel by his new fealty, nor did it seem to him, as once it
might have done, a base perversion of the matchless creations of the
English tongue that in diluted and modified form, they should interest
and entertain a little maid of six.

The morning was a long rapture for the two strange comrades. Joel told
stories till Celia tired of a passive role and entertained him with
some of those flights of fancy compared with which the most audacious
attempts of the adult imagination seem tame and groveling. The