ich is lunacy; anybody with a
modicum of brains--

"Brains!" snorted Riedriech. "What is it you know about brains? _No_
doctor knows what is on the inside of brains! You make tinkerings
mit the inside plumbings, _Gott bewahre_! and cut up womens and cats
and such-like poor little dumb beasts and says you, 'Now I know all
about the brains of man.' It is right there where you are wrong,
Comrade Geddes!"

"_Habet!_" said Comrade Geddes.

"Look you," said the old visionary, with sudden passion, "look you
on the little bulb here, so dirty and ugly you hide him in the
ground quick. So! But by and by comes up green shoots, and blossoms.
So it is with the great thoughts of men, the deep race-thoughts,
Comrade Geddes--seeds, bulbs, germs, all of them, in the ugly husks
of the common people. Out of our muck and grime they come, the
little green shoots which the fool will say is poison, maybe, but
which the wise know and labor and make room for. I, Riedriech, and
workers like me, we go into our graves nothing but husks. But it is
out of the buried hearts of us comes green things growing; and
then--_die Blumen! die Blumen!_" said the cabinet-maker, with a
still, far-away look.

"And," he finished, with a sad smile, "it is _our_ flowers that you
put in vases of gold on your altars. And you say, 'Listen: Jesus the
carpenter talks plain words to his fishermen friends.' And, 'Hush!
Burns the plowman makes songs in the field!'"

The doctor looked up, and his eyes were very tender; his smile made
me wonder. With a swift, friendly hand he patted the rougher hand of
the other. And it was at this opportune moment that Mary Magdalen
led around a corner of Hynds House no less personages than Mrs.
Haile and Miss Martha Hopkins. Their eyes fell upon Doctor Richard
Geddes. They looked at each other. They looked at Alicia and me. And
I knew their thoughts: "Sirens, both of you!" said Miss Hopkins's
eyes.

"How do you do, Doctor Geddes!" said both ladies, as demurely as
cats. _I_ should have felt like a boy caught stealing jam. He went
right on planting bulbs.

"Hello, Martha. What's on the carpet now?" he greeted that lady,
airily. "Writing another paper on 'The Ironic Note in Chivalry'? How
about 'The Effect of the Pre-Raphaelites upon the Feeble-minded'? Or
is it the 'Relation of the Child to Its Mother,' this time?"

"You will have your little joke, Doctor," smiled Miss Hopkins, a
dish-faced blonde with a cultured expression.

"J