s very bitter. I needed my Father very much
that year. And my step-mother was a harsh woman.--Late that night when I
got home,--ugly with sorrow,--I found that I'd left my Catcher's glove.
It happened to be one that my Father had given me.--With matches and a
tin-can lantern I fumbled my way back to the brook. The old glove lay
palm-upward in the moss and leaves. Somebody had filled the palm with
wild violets.--I put my face down in it--like a kid--and bawled my heart
out.--It was little Annie Dun Vorlees it seemed who had put the violets
there. Trailed me clear from the Ball Field. Little kid too. Only
fourteen years to my twenty. Why her Mother wouldn't even let me come to
the house. Had made Annie promise even not to speak to me.--But when
Trouble hit me, little Annie--?" The Old Doctor frowned his eyebrows.
"Words!" he said. "It's _words_ after all that have the real fragrance
to 'em!--Now take that word 'Loyalty' for instance. I can't even see it
in a Newspaper without--" He put back his head suddenly. He gave a queer
little chuckle. "Sounds funny, doesn't it, Kiddies," he laughed, "to
say that the sweetest thing you ever smelled in your life was an old
baseball glove thrown down on the mossy bank of a brook?"

I looked at Carol. Carol looked at me. His eyes were popping. We ran to
the Book. We snatched it open. It bumped our heads. We pointed to the
writing. I read it out loud.

The most beautiful smell in the world is the smell of an old
tattered baseball glove that's been lying in the damp
grass--by the side of a brook--in June Time.

My Mother looked funny.

"Good Gracious," she said. "Are my children developing 'Second
Sight'?--First it was the 'Field of Tulips' already written down as
their Father's choice before he could even get the words out of his
mouth!--And now, hours before the Old Doctor ever even dreamed of the
Book's existence they've got his distinctly unique taste in perfumes
all--"

"But this isn't the Old Doctor!" I cried out. "She wrote it herself.
It's the Lady down at the hotel. It's the--the Empress that the Old
Doctor was talking about!"

"The--Empress?" gasped the Old Doctor.

"Well maybe you said 'Princess,'" I admitted. "It was some one from
Austria anyway--come to fuss about the old Dun Vorlees place! You said
it was! You said that's who it was!--It's the only Strange Lady in the
village!"

"What?" gasped the Old Doctor. "_What?_" He looked at the book. He read