served Mr. Rose. "A man who had been brought up with
the Blarney Stone for a teething-ring once sold me an unexpurgated
edition de luxe, with illustrations, so I ought to know."

"I never saw it, sir!"

"No, Corwin B., you did not. You can if you want to, by coming down to
my office, where it is still lying in the packing-box it came in. I
don't think you want to. Gerard's story isn't there."

"Its moral seems to be that women are a nuisance," Isabel commented, her
manner injured.

"That would not be a moral, it would be a falsehood," Gerard demurred.
"No, I fancy the moral might be, do not challenge Fate to a duel. Are
you considering our nonsense, Miss Rose?"

"I was thinking of the story," Flavia amended. "I was wondering if the
kings would not soon have filled the vase had they been content to mark
each happy hour, and whether a wise treasurer of happiness would not
find a vase filled with seed-pearls where they found a vase empty."

"Exactly! You have found the secret, no doubt. Moral: do not ask too
much."

"A day too much?" marvelled Corrie. "Why, I expect a lifetime!" He flung
back his head, looking around the smiling circle. "Well, why not? What's
a lifetime, anyhow? Not half enough to get all the fun there is in
living, as long as you do no harm by it. And who wants to do any harm
when there is so much else to do? Not anyone in his right mind. Anyway,
I've got to-day's pearl canned, and _it_ can't get away. And I can think
of lots of others I've had, if I could go back for them."

"Shall I guess the name of Al-Mansor's vase?" Flavia asked, as she rose.
She was smiling, but her cheeks were flushed and her serious eyes
caressed her brother. "It was Memory, I think. And, no, Corrie, the
pearls put there cannot be lost."

The extreme warmth of the day had continued into the evening. As Isabel
followed Flavia across the hall, Corrie overtook his cousin, wound a
scarf around her bare shoulders and lured her out on the veranda. She
yielded not unwillingly, contrary to her recent custom of neglecting
him, and they disappeared together. Any such latent project of Gerard's
was prevented by Mr. Rose's mood for chat, a mood not usual for him.

"You are not looking much like the driver I met on the way home,
to-day," he informed his guest, surveying Gerard quizzically, when they
were established in the drawing-room. "But I didn't recognize my own
son, for that matter. He don't seem like mine, when he's out in th