st of a sentence and stared at him.

"Don't give me away until I tell you to, Ned," he said, "but I don't
know but I am going to follow your example."

"My example?"

"Yes, going to get married."

The young man gasped. A look of surprise, of amusement, then of generous
sympathy came over his face. He grasped Lawton's hand.

"Who is she?"

"Oh, a woman I wanted more than anything in the world when I was about
your age."

"Then she isn't young?"

"She is better than young."

"Well," agreed the young man, "being young and pretty is not
everything."

"Pretty!" said Harry Lawton, scornfully, "pretty! She is a great
beauty."

"And not young?"

"She is a great beauty, and better than young, because time has not
touched her beauty, and you can see for yourself that it lasts."

The young man laughed. "Oh, well," he said, with a tender inflection, "I
dare say that my Amy will look like that to me."

"If she doesn't you don't love her," said Lawton. "But my Eudora IS
that."

"That is a queer-sounding Greek name."

"She is Greek, like her name. Such beauty never grows old. She stands on
her pedestal, and time only looks at her to love her."

"I thought you were a business man as hard as nails," said the young
man, wonderingly. Lawton laughed.

When Thursday came, Lawton, carefully dressed and carrying a long
tissue-paper package, evidently of roses, approached the Yates house. It
was late in the afternoon. There had been a warm day, and the trees were
clouds of green and more bushes had blossomed. Eudora had put on a
green silk dress of her youth. The revolving fashions had made it very
passable, and the fabric was as beautiful as ever.

When Lawton presented her with the roses she pinned one in the yellowed
lace which draped her bodice and put the rest in a great china vase on
the table. The roses were very fragrant, and immediately the whole room
was possessed by them.

A tiny, insistent cry came from a corner, and Lawton and Eudora turned
toward it. There stood the old wooden cradle in which Eudora had been
rocked to sleep, but over the clumsy hood Eudora had tacked a fall of
rich old lace and a great bow of soft pink satin.

"He is waking up," said the man, in a hushed, almost reverent voice.

Eudora nodded. She went toward the cradle, and the man followed. She
lifted the curtain of lace, and there became visible little feebly
waving pink arms and hands, like tentacles of love, and a little
pucker