gold. They turned to see Aunt Daphne issue from the
kitchen, twig-broom in hand.

"Heah!" she exclaimed. "What fo' yo' kyahin' on like er wil' _gyraff_
we'n we got comp'ny, yo' triflin' ol' fan-tail, yo'! Git outen heah!"
She waved her weapon and the bird, with a raucous shriek of defiance,
retired in ruffled disorder. The master of Damory Court looked at
Shirley. "What shall we name _him_?"

"I'd call him Fire-Cracker if he goes off like that," she said. And
Fire-Cracker the bird was christened forthwith.

"And now," said Shirley, "let's set out the ramblers."

The major had brought a rough plan, sketched from memory, of the old
arrangement of the formal garden. "I'll just go over the lines of the
beds with Unc' Jefferson," he proposed, "while you two potter over
these roses." So Valiant and Shirley walked back up the slope beneath
the pergola together. The sun was westering fast, and long lilac
cloud-trails lay over the terraces. But the bumbling bees were still
busy in the honeysuckle and hawking dragon-flies shot hither and
thither. A robin was tilting on the rim of the fountain and it looked at
them with head turned sidewise, with a low sweet pip that mingled with
the trickling laugh of the falling water.

With Ranston puffing and blowing like a black porpoise over his creaking
go-cart, they planted the ramblers--crimson and pink and white--Valiant
much of the time on his knees, his hands plunging deep into the black
spongy earth, and Shirley with broad hat flung on the grass, her fingers
separating the clinging thread-like roots and her small arched foot
tamping down the soil about them. Her hair--the color of wet raw wood in
the sunlight--was very near the brown head and sometimes their fingers
touched over the work. Once, as they stood up, flushed with the
exercise, a great black and orange butterfly, dazed with the sun-glow,
alighted on Valiant's rolled-up sleeve. He held his arm perfectly still
and blew gently on the wavering pinions till it swam away. When a
redbird flirted by, to his delight she whistled its call so perfectly
that it wheeled in mid-flight and tilted inquiringly back toward them.

As they descended the terrace again to the pergola, he said, "There's
only one thing lacking at Damory Court--a sun-dial."

"Then you haven't found it?" she cried delightedly. "Come and let me
show you."

She led the way through the maze of beds at one side till they reached a
hedge laced thickly with Virg