habit of older people. I’d rather they would really smile at you any time.

I went on. I said, and heatedly, I must admit: “I can say the multiplication table up to the twelves, and what more can you ask?” And just to prove it I did, up to “twelve times twelve is one hundred and fifty-nine;” but even then he didn’t look convinced.

“There are other things,” he said. I asked what, but he wasn’t concrete.

“I love life as it is,” I said, and none too steadily. I couldn’t bear to think of leaving Queensburg and Virginia! But uncle had got up and was puttering around near the bay window, where a bookcase stands, and so I knew he didn’t hear me. I tried once more to attract his attention, but he was looking at a lot of coloured plates of the antennæ of some sort of rare beetle, and I had to give up. But after I had eaten another piece of cake and a little more preserve, I got up. I picked up the dishes and went to the kitchen with them, for I always clear the table for Mrs. Bradly, who is Uncle Frank’s housekeeper.

bear

She was washing lettuce and splattering a good deal of water.

“Bradly-dear,” I said, “do you know about this letter?”

“Set,” she said, and waved toward a stool which stood before the back window. I settled on it and looked out in the garden, which is a shabby but dear place. The hollyhocks were beginning to sag, I remember, and sprawled every way; and the zinnias positively blazed colour in the first taupe shadows of the dusk. . . . It was pretty, and it made you feel still, as if you wanted to close your eyes halfway and smile just a little; but it made you feel sad. . . . I don’t understand that feeling, but sometimes I have it. . . . Mrs. Bradly never had it, for I asked her. But I think my mother would have understood it. . . . Pretty things make it, and some kinds of music, and I don’t know whether anything else does or not, but those are the only things that have made me have it. . . . I don’t imagine uncle ever felt it. One day I asked him.

still

me

“Uncle Frank,” I said, “do you ever feel sort of sad, and awfully happy, when it’s just hazy, soft-dark outdoors and the crickets squeak and everything seems cosy and yet sort of lonesome, and you feel sort of contented and yet--miserable, the way you do after you’ve eaten a big Thanksgiving dinner----”

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