n her lips there was a dim, happy
smile. "Making Thor out is a good deal like reading in a language you're
just beginning to learn; you only see some of the beauties yet--but you
know you'll find plenty more when you get on a bit. In the mean while
the idioms may bother you."

Claude, who was leaning forward limply, his elbows on his knees, made a
circular, protesting movement of his neck and head, as though his collar
fitted him uncomfortably. "Well, he's all Greek to me."

"But they say Greek richly repays those who study it."

"Humph! 'Fraid I'm not built that way. Do you know why he's got such a
bee in his bonnet about--?"

He was going to say, in order to lead up to his announcement, "about
Fay, the gardener"; but he couldn't. The words wouldn't come out. The
prospect of telling any one that he was going to marry little Rosie Fay
terrified him. He hardly understood now how he could have told his
father and mother. He would never have done it if Thor hadn't been
behind him. As it was, both his parents were so discreet concerning his
confidence that neither had mentioned it since that night--which made
his situation endurable. So he changed the form of his question to--"bee
in his bonnet about--helping people?"

"Oh, it isn't a bee in his bonnet. It's just--himself. He can't do
anything else."

He said, moodily, "Perhaps he doesn't help them as much as he thinks."

"He doesn't--as much as he wants to. I know that."

"Well, why not?"

She dropped her work to her lap and looked vaguely toward the dying
fire. Her air was that of a person who had already considered the
question, though to little purpose. "I don't know. Sometimes I think he
doesn't go the right way to work. And yet it can hardly be that.
Certainly no one could go to work with a better heart."

Claude was referring inwardly to Rosie's five thousand a year, and
perceiving that it created as many difficulties as it did away with,
when he said, "Thinks everything a matter of dollars and cents."

She received this pensively. "Perhaps."

* * * * *

And yet Thor's warning sent Claude to see Rosie on the following
afternoon. It was not his regular day for coming, so that his appearance
was a matter of happy terror tempered only by the fact that he caught
her in her working-dress. His regular days were those on which Jasper
Fay took his garden-truck to town. Fay rarely returned then before six
or seven, so that with t