e each secretly believed--and we'd tell each other so when nobody was
round--that there _had_ been other babies in the world, but never
before one like ours. I don't know but what I think that yet."

"Silly old doctor-man!" she murmured.

"And now my baby's a woman with all of life before her. From where you
are it seems as if it was never going to end, but when you get where I
am and begin to look back, you see that it's just a little journey over
before you've got used to the road and struck your gait. We ought to
have more time. The first half's just learning and the second's where
we put the learning into practice. And we're busy over that when we
have to go. It's too short."

"Our life's going to be long. Out in California we're going to come
into a sort of second childhood, be perennials like those larkspurs I
had in the garden at home."

They were silent, thinking of the garden behind the old house in
Rochester with walks outlined by shells and edged by long flower beds.
The girl looked back on it with a detached interest as an unregretted
feature of a past existence in which she had once played her part and
that was cut from the present by a chasm never to be bridged. The man
held it cherishingly as one of many lovely memories that stretched from
this river bank in a strange land back through the years, a link in the
long chain.

"Wasn't it pretty!" she said dreamily, "with the line of hollyhocks
against the red brick wall, and the big, bushy pine tree in the corner.
Everything was bright except that tree."

His eyes narrowed in wistful retrospect:

"It was as if all the shadows in the garden had concentrated
there--huddled together in one place so that the rest could be full of
color and sunshine. And when Daddy John and I wanted to cut it down
you wouldn't let us, cried and stamped, and so, of course, we gave it
up. I actually believe you had a sentiment about that tree."

"I suppose I had, though I don't know exactly what you mean by a
sentiment. I loved it because I'd once had such a perfect time up
there among the branches. The top had been cut off and a ring of
boughs was left round the place, and it made the most comfortable seat,
almost like a cradle. One day you went to New York and when you came
back you brought me a box of candy. Do you remember it--burnt almonds
and chocolate drops with a dog painted on the cover? Well, I wanted to
get them at their very best, enjoy them as mu