der?

He laid them tenderly upon the table now, and smiled slyly to see me
eye them askance.

"Did you know," said he, over his coffee, "that Laurence came in this
morning on the six-o'clock? January had him out in the garden showing
off the judge's new patent hives, and I stopped on my way to church
and shook hands over the fence. It was all I could do to keep from
shouting that all's right with the world, and all he had to do was to
be glad. I didn't know how much I cared for that boy until this
morning. Parson, it's a--a terrible thing to love people, when you
come to think about it, isn't it? I told him you were honing to see
him: and that we'd be looking for him along about eleven. And I
intimated that if he didn't show up then I'd go after him with a gun.
He said he'd be here on the stroke." After a moment, he added gently:
"I figured they'd be here by then--Madame and Mary Virginia."

"What! You have induced Laurence to come while she is here--without
giving him any intimation that he is likely to meet her?" I said,
aghast. "You are a bold man, John Flint!"

The study windows were open and the sweet wind and the warm sun poured
in unchecked. The stir of bees, the scent of honey-locust just
opening, drifted in, and the slow solemn clangor of church bells, and
lilts and flutings and calls and whistlings from the tree-tops. We
could see passing groups of our neighbors, fathers and mothers
shepherding little flocks of children in their Sunday best, trotting
along with demure Sabbath faces on their way to church. The Butterfly
Man looked out, waved gaily to the passing children, who waved back a
joyous response, nodded to their smiling parents, followed the flight
of a tanager's sober spouse, and sniffed the air luxuriously.

"Oh, somebody's got to stage-manage, parson," he said at last, lightly
enough, but with a hint of tiredness in his eyes. "And then vanish
behind the scenes, leaving the hero and heroine in the middle of the
spotlight, with the orchestra tuning up 'The Voice that Breathed o'er
Eden,'" he finished, without a trace of bitterness. "So I sent Madame
a note by a little nigger newsie." His eyes crinkled, and he quoted
the favorite aphorism of the colored people, when they seem to
exercise a meticulous care: "Brer Rabbit say, 'I trus' no mistake.'"

"You are a bold man," said I again, with a respect that made him
laugh. Then we went over to his rooms to wait, and while we waited I
tried to read a