have games and fun to no end. I was just seventeen, only seventeen, and
had a long, long life before me wherein to enjoy myself. Oh, it was good
to be alive! What a delightful place the world was!--so accommodating, I
felt complete mistress of it. It was like an orange--I merely had to
squeeze it and it gave forth sweets plenteously. The stream sounded far
away, the sunlight blazed and danced, grannie's voice was a pleasant
murmur in my ear, the cockatoos screamed over the house and passed away
to the west. Summer is heavenly and life is a joy, I reiterated. Joy!
Joy! There was joy in the quit! quit! of the green-and-crimson parrots,
which swung for a moment in the rose-bush over the gate, and then whizzed
on into the summer day. There was joy in the gleam of the sun and in the
hum of the bees, and it throbbed in my heart. Joy! Joy! A jackass laughed
his joy as he perched on the telegraph wire out in the road. joy! joy!
Summer is a dream of delight and life is a joy, I said in my heart. I was
repeating the one thing over and over--but ah! it was a measure of
happiness which allowed of much repetition. The cool murmur of the creek
grew far away, I felt my poetry books slip off my knees and fall to the
floor, but I was too content to bother about them--too happy to need their
consolation, which I had previously so often and so hungrily sought.
Youth! Joy! Warmth!

The clack of the garden gate, as it swung to, awoke me from a pleasant
sleep. Grannie had left the veranda, and on the table where she had been
writing aunt Helen was filling many vases with maidenhair fern and La
France roses. A pleasant clatter from the dining-room announced that my
birthday tea was in active preparation. The position of the yellow
sunbeams at the far end of the wide veranda told that the dense shadows
were lengthening, and that the last of the afternoon was wheeling
westward. Taking this in, in an instant I straightened the piece of
mosquito-netting, which, to protect me from the flies, someone--auntie
probably--had spread across my face, and feigned to be yet asleep. By the
footsteps which sounded on the stoned garden walk, I knew that Harold
Beecham was one of the individuals approaching.

"How do you do, Mrs Bell? Allow me to introduce my friend, Archie
Goodchum. Mrs Bell, Mr Goodchum. Hasn't it been a roaster today?
Considerably over 100 degrees in the shade. Terribly hot!"

Aunt Helen acknowledged the introduction, and seated her gu