'at home.'"

"Hip, hip, hurrah!" said the Boy.

Then she turned--and her face was all, and more than all, he had hoped
it might be.

"Oh, Boy," she said. "Oh, Boy dear!"

* * * * *

After that, it was a very happy tea. Neither had been quite natural,
nor had they been really true to themselves, the day before; so the
delight of meeting seemed to follow a longer parting than the actual
twenty-four hours. The Boy's brown eyes rested in tenderness on the
hand that filled his cup, and she did not say "Don't"; she merely
smiled indulgently, and added the cream and sugar slowly, as if to let
him do what he willed.

The hum of bees was in the garden; a sense of youth was in the air.
The sunbeams danced among the mulberry leaves.

The Boy insisted upon carrying back the tray, to do away at once with
the possibility of interruption from Jenkins. Then he drew their
chairs into the deeper shade of the mulberry-tree, a corner invisible
from all windows. The Boy had learned a lesson while looking through
the storeroom blind.

There they sat and talked, in calm content. It did not seem to matter
much of what they spoke, so long as they could lie back facing one
another; each listening to the voice which held so much more of meaning
in it than the mere words it uttered; each looking into the eyes which
had now become clear windows through which shone the soul.

Suddenly the Boy said: "How silly we were, the other day, to talk of
the relative ages of our bodies. What do they matter? Our souls are
the real you and I. And our souls are always the same age. Some souls
are old--old from the first. I have seen an old soul look out of the
eyes of a little child; and I have seen a young soul dance in the eyes
of an old, old woman. You and I, thank God, have young souls,
Christobel, and we shall be eternally young."

He stretched his arms over his head, in utter joyful content with life.

"Go on, Boy dear," said Christobel. "I am not sure that I agree with
you; but I like to hear you talk."

"At first," he said, "our bodies are so babyish that our souls do not
find them an adequate medium of expression. But by and by our bodies
grow and develop; after which come the beautiful years of perfection,
ten, twenty, thirty of them, when the young soul goes strong and gay
through life, clad in the strong gay young body. Then--gradually,
gradually, the strong young soul, in its unwearied, immorta