er, and now we will
all go out on the porch for our coffee. I haven't any Shelley that you
have not seen a dozen times--I just intended that surprise to come to
the boy and in the way Ruth wanted it--she has talked of nothing else
since she knew he was coming. Mighty dangerous, I can tell you, that old
bench. Ruth can take care of herself, but that poor fellow will be in
a dreadful state if we leave them alone too long. Sit here, Holker,
and tell me about the dinner and what you said. All that Peter could
remember was that you never did better, and that everybody cheered, and
that the squabs were so dry he couldn't eat them."

But the Scribe refuses to be interested in Holker's talk, however
brilliant, or in Miss Felicia's crisp repartee. His thoughts are down
among the palms, where the two figures are entering the arbor, the
soft glow of half a dozen lanterns falling upon the joyous face of the
beautiful girl, as, with hand in Jack's, she leads him to a seat beside
her on the bench.

"But it's like home," Jack gasped. "Why, you must remember your own
garden, and the porch that ran alongside of the kitchen, and the brick
walls--and just see how big it is and you never told me a word about it!
Why?"

"Oh, because it would have spoiled all the fun; I was so afraid daddy
would tell you that I made him promise not to say a word; and nobody
else had seen it except Mr. Morris, and he said torture couldn't drag it
out of him. That old Major that Uncle Peter thinks so much of came near
spoiling the surprise, but Aunt Felicia said she would take care of him
in the back of the house--and she did; and I mounted guard at the top
of the stairs before anybody could get hold of you. Isn't it too
lovely?--and, do you know, there are real live frogs in that pond and
you can hear them croak? And now tell me about daddy, and how he gets on
without me."

But Jack was not ready yet to talk about daddy, or the work, or anything
that concerned Corklesville and its tunnel--the transition had been too
sudden and too startling. To be fired from a gun loaded with care, hard
work and anxiety--hurled through hours of winter travel and landed at a
dinner-table next some charming young woman, was an experience which had
occurred to him more than once in the past two years. But to be thrust
still further into space until he reached an Elysium replete with
whispering fountains, flowering vines and the perfume of countless
blossoms--the whole tucke