ld, tried to pretend he was merely passing through, and though it
was but a feeble performance, Miss Bentley should have accepted it
without protest, then all would have been well. Instead, she said, still
with that puzzled half frown, "Don't go, I am only waiting here a moment
for my cousin, who has stopped at the superintendent's cottage." She
motioned over her shoulder to a vine-covered dwelling just visible
through the trees.

"Please do not put it in that way," he protested. "As if your being here
did not add tremendously to my desire to remain. I am conscious of
rushing in most unceremoniously upon you, and----"

Hesitating there, hat in hand, his manners were disarmingly frank. Miss
Bentley laughed again as she deposited her flowers, a mass of pink and
white cosmos, upon a bench, and sat down beside them. She seemed willing
to have him put it as he liked. She wore the same grey suit and soft
felt hat, jammed down any way on her bright hair and pinned with a
pinkish quill, and was somehow, more emphatically than before, the Girl
of All Others.

How could a Candy Man be expected to know what he was about? What wonder
that his next remark should be a hope that she had suffered no ill
effects from the accident?

"None at all, thank you," Miss Bentley replied, and the puzzled
expression faded. It was as if she inwardly exclaimed, "Now I know!"
"Aunt Eleanor," she added, "was needlessly alarmed. I seem rather given
to accidents of late." Thus saying she began to arrange her flowers.

The Candy Man dropped down on the step where the view--of Miss
Bentley--was most charming, as she softly laid one bloom upon another in
caressing fashion, her curling lashes now almost touching her cheek, now
lifted as she looked away to the river, or bent her gaze upon the
occupant of the step.

"Do you often come here?" she asked, adding when he replied that this
was the third time, that she thought he had rather an air of
proprietorship.

He laughed at this, and explained how he had set out to pay a visit to
a sick boy at St. Mary's Hospital, but had allowed the glorious day to
tempt him to the park.

Below them on the terraced hillside a guard sat reading his paper;
across the meadow a few golfers were to be seen against the horizon.
All about them the birds and squirrels were busily minding their own
affairs; above them smiled the blue, blue sky, and the cousin, whoever
he or she might be, considerately lingered.

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