a.

Paul was in the garden with Miss. Juno. He had followed her thither with
what speed he dared. She had expected him; there was not breathing-space
for conventionality between these two. In one part of the garden sat an
artist at his easel; by his side a lady somewhat his senior, but of the
type of face and figure that never really grows old, or looks it. She
was embroidering flowers from nature, tinting them to the life, and
rivaling her companion in artistic effects. These were the parents of
Miss. Juno--or rather not quite that. Her mother had been twice married;
first, a marriage of convenience darkened the earlier years of her life;
Miss. Juno was the only reward for an age of domestic misery. A
clergyman joined these parties--God had nothing to do with the compact;
it would seem that he seldom has. A separation very naturally and very
properly followed in the course of time; a young child was the only
possible excuse for the delay of the divorce. Thus are the sins of the
fathers visited upon the grandchildren. Then came a marriage of love.
The artist who having found his ideal had never known a moment's
weariness, save when he was parted from her side. Their union was
perfect; God had joined them. The stepfather to Miss. Juno had always
been like a big brother to her--even as her mother had always seemed
like an elder sister.

Oh, what a trio was that, my countrymen, where liberty, fraternity and
equality joined hands without howling about it and making themselves a
nuisance in the nostrils of their neighbors!

Miss. Juno stood in a rose-arbor and pointed to the artists at their
work.

"Did you ever see anything like that, Paul?"

"Like what?"

"Like those sweet simpletons yonder. They have for years been quite
oblivious of the world about them. Thrones might topple, empires rise
and fall, it would matter nothing to them so long as their garden
bloomed, and the birds nested and sung, and he sold a picture once in an
age that the larder might not go bare."

"I've seen something like it, Miss. Juno. I've seen fellows who never
bothered themselves about the affairs of others,--who, in short, minded
their own business strictly--and they got credit for being selfish."

"Were they happy?"

"Yes, in their way. Probably their way wasn't my way, and their kind of
happiness would bore me to death. You know happiness really can't be
passed around, like bon-bons or sherbet, for every one to taste. I hate
bon-bon