sn't know. The Wise Virgins are
Bernard Shaw women who know what they want in the way of husbands and go
to it. The Foolish Virgins are the old maids, who think it unwomanly to
get ready, and find themselves left in the end!"

The silver kitten clawed at the silver dress, and climbed on her
mistress's shoulder.

"All of the parables make good modern plots. Mother would be shocked if
she knew I was writing them that way. So I don't tell her. Mother is a
dear, but she doesn't understand. I should like to tell things to Dad,
but he won't listen. If I were a boy he would listen. But he thinks I
ought to be like mother."

She slipped from the sun-dial and came and sat in the chair which her
father had vacated. "If I were a boy I should have studied medicine. I
wanted to be a trained nurse, but Dad wouldn't let me. He said I'd hate
having to do the hard work, and perhaps I should. I like to wear pretty
clothes, and a nurse never has a chance."

"Perhaps you'll marry."

"Oh, no. I should _hate_ to be like mother."

"Why?"

"She just lives for Dad. Now I couldn't do that. I am not going to marry.
I don't like men. They ask too much. I like books and cats and being by
myself. I am never lonesome. Sometimes I talk to Pan over there, and
pretend he is playing to me on his pipes, and then I write poetry. Real
poetry. I'll read it to you some time. There's one called 'The Rose
Garden.' I wrote it about a woman who was a patient of father's. When she
knew she was going to die she wrote him a little note and asked him to
see that her body was cremated, and that the ashes were strewn over the
roses in his garden. He didn't seem to see anything in it but just a
sick woman's fancy. But I knew that she was in love with him. And my poem
tells that her blessed dust gathered itself into a gentle wraith which
lives and breathes near him."

"And you aren't afraid to feel that her gentle wraith is here in the
garden?"

"Why should I be? I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in fairies,
either, or Santa Claus. But I like to read about them and write about
them, and--and wish that it might be so."

There was something almost wistful in her voice. Richard, aware suddenly
of what a child she was, bent forward.

"I think I half believe in fairies, and Christmas wouldn't be anything
without Santa Claus, and as for the soul of your gentle lady, I have a
feeling that it is finding Heaven in the rose garden."

She was stroking the s