lame, as
she poised where the sun came full upon her. One hand clutched her
flowing blue skirts snugly about her ankles; the other opened coaxingly
to a kitten crouched to spring on the limb of an apple-tree above her.
The head was thrown back, the vivid lips were parted, and he heard her
laugh low to herself. Near by was a towering rose-bush, from which she
had broken the last red rose, large, full, and lush, its petals already
loosened. Now she wrenched away a handful of these, and flung them
upward at the watchful kitten. The scarlet flecks drifted back around
her and upon her. Like little red butterflies hovering in golden
sunlight, they lodged in her many-braided yellow hair, or fluttered down
the long curls that hung in front of her ears. She laughed again under
the caressing shower. Then she tore away the remaining petals and tossed
them up with an elf-like daintiness, not at the crouched and expectant
kitten this time, but so that the whole red rain floated tenderly down
upon her upturned face and into the folds of the white kerchief crossed
upon her breast. She waited for the last feathery petal. Her hidden
lover saw it lodge in the little hollow at the base of her bare, curved
throat. He could hold no longer.

Stepping from the covert that had shielded him, he called softly to her.

"Prudence--Prue!"

She had reached again for the kitten, but at the sound of his low,
vigorous note, she turned quickly toward him, colouring with a glow that
spread from the corner of the crossed kerchief up to the yellow hair
above her brow. She answered with quick breaths.

"Joel--Joel--Joel!"

She laughed aloud, clapping her small hands, and he ran to her--over
beds of marigolds, heartsease, and lady's-slippers, through a row of
drowsy-looking, heavy-headed dahlias, and past other withering flowers,
all but choked out by the rank garden growths of late summer. Then his
arms opened and seemed to swallow the leaping little figure, though his
kisses fell with hardly more weight upon the yielded face than had the
rose-petals a moment since, so tenderly mindful was his ardour. She
submitted, a little as the pampered kitten had before submitted to her
own pettings.

"You dear old sobersides, you--how gaunt and careworn you look, and how
hungry, and what wild eyes you have to frighten one with! At first I
thought you were a crazy man."

He held her face up to his eager eyes, having no words to say, overcome
by the joy that su