ilded potato-masher, with blue
roses on it, which swings from the hanging lamp, was done by your humble
servant. She has loved me ever since."

"Iris!" exclaimed Lynn, reproachfully. "How could you!"

"How could I what?"

"Paint anything so outrageous as that?"

"My dear boy," said Miss Temple, patronisingly, with her pretty head a
little to one side, "you are young in the ways of the world. I was not
achieving a work of art; I was merely giving pleasure to the Fraeulein.
Much trouble would be saved if people who undertake to give pleasure
would consult the wishes of the recipient in preference to their own.
Tastes differ, as even you may have observed. Personally, I have no use
for a gilded potato-masher--I couldn't even live in the same house with
one,--but I was pleasing her, not myself."

"I wonder what I could do that would please her," said Lynn, half to
himself.

"Make her something out of nothing," suggested Iris. "She would like
that better than anything else. She has a wall basket made of a fish
broiler, a chair that was once a barrel, a dresser which has been
evolved from a packing box, a sofa that was primarily a cot, and a match
box made from a tin cup covered with silk and gilded on the inside, not
to mention heaps of other things."

"Then what is left for me? The desirable things seem to have been used
up."

"Wait," said Iris, "and I'll show you." She ran off gaily, humming
a little song under her breath, and came back presently with a
clothes-pin, a sheet of orange-coloured tissue paper, an old black
ostrich feather, and her paints.

"What in the world--" began Lynn.

"Don't be impatient, please. Make the clothes-pin gold, with a black
head, and then I'll show you what to do next."

"Aren't you going to help me?"

"Only with my valuable advice--it is your gift, you know."

Awkwardly, Lynn gilded the clothes-pin and suspended it from the back of
a chair to dry. "I hope she'll like it," he said. "She pointed to me
once and said something in German to her brother. I didn't understand,
but I remembered the words, and when I got home I looked them up in my
dictionary. As nearly as I could get it, she had characterised me as 'a
big, lumbering calf.'"

"Discerning woman," commented Iris. "Now, take this sheet of tissue
paper and squeeze it up into a little ball, then straighten it out and
do it again. When it's all soft and crinkly, I'll tell you what to do
next."

"There," exclaimed Lynn,