e dining-room on hot afternoons,
waiting for it to get cool, reading some travel book, eating summer
apples, and listening to Win and Thea practicing duets in the
parlor. Lord, I can hear 'em now! I'd look out at the brick walls,
hot, you know, in the sun, and the pear tree, with the nurse rocking
Babe under it, and old Annie shelling peas by the kitchen door, and
it all seemed so comfortable--"

His eyes were half closed. The children listened dreamily, huddled
against him; low red rays crept down from the west-bound sun and
struck the little pond to copper, the nickel dishes to silver, the
lady's skirt to a peach-colored glory; a little sudden breeze set
the red bottle tinkling between the stones. But to the group
entranced with memories so vivid that reality blurred before them,
the peach and copper glories were ripe fruit against an old brick
wall, the tinkle echoed from an old piano in a dim, green-shuttered
parlor, and the soft snoring of the General, asleep on the silk
motor coat, was the drowsy breathing of a contented little fellow in
knickerbockers dreaming in a window seat.

"Did you ever go to Atlantic City?"

The lady's voice woke them as a gong wakes a sleeper. "Now that's my
idea of the country!"

He stared at her vaguely.

"But--but that's no place for children," he protested. He had hardly
grown up at that moment, himself.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It's not exactly necessary to have six children, you know," she
said, "and then you needn't be worried over a place for them, and
can afford to think a little about the place you'd like for
yourself."

The sun was in her eyes and she missed the look in his as he jumped
up from the astonished group and seized her wrist.

"Christine, you simply shan't talk that way!" he said. "I don't
know what's the matter with you to-day--why are you so different?
Are you trying to tease me? Because I might as well tell you right
now that you're succeeding a little too well."

The pink parasol dropped between them. Her eyes met his squarely,
though her voice shook a little.

"Let my wrist go, Mr. Armstrong," she said, "you hurt me. I assure
you I'm not different at all. If you really want to know what the
matter with me is, let me ask you if you saw anything out of the way
before your friends there interfered?" she pointed to the little
group he had left. "We seemed to be getting on very well then."

His face fell, and she went on more quickly and with l