n with."

"And meanwhile you're on pins and needles to be off to your wife's
bedside. Very well, man--drink up your cider; and many thanks for your
good wishes!"

As Mr. Benny hurried towards the wicket-gate and the street leading down
to the ferry, he caught sight, across the hedge, of two children seated
together in a corner of the garden on the step of a summer arbour, and
paused to wave a hand to them.

They were a girl and a boy--the girl about eight years old and the boy a
year or so younger--and the pair were occupied in making a garland such as
children carry about on May-morning--two barrel-hoops fixed crosswise and
mounted on a pole. The girl had laid the pole across her lap, and was
binding the hoops with ferns and wild hyacinths, wallflowers, and garden
tulips, talking the while with the boy, who bent his head close by hers
and seemed to peer into the flowers. But in fact he was blind.

"You're late!" the girl called to Mr. Benny. At the sound of her voice,
the boy too waved a hand to him.

"It's your grandfather's birthday, and I've been drinking his health."
He beckoned them over to the hedge. "And it's another person's birthday,"
he announced mysteriously.

"Bless the man! you don't tell me you've gone and got another!" exclaimed
the girl.

Mr. Benny nodded, no whit abashed.

"Boy or girl?"

"Boy."

"What is he like?" asked the boy. His blindness came from some defect of
the optic nerve, and did not affect the beauty of his eyes, which were
curiously reflective (as though they looked inwards), and in colour a deep
violet-grey.

"I hadn't much time to take stock of him this morning," Mr. Benny
confessed; "but the doctor said he was a fine one." He nodded at the
garland. "Birthday present for your grandfather?" he asked.

"Grandfather doesn't bother himself about us," the girl answered.
"Besides, what would he do with it?"

"I know--I know. It's better be unmannerly than troublesome, as they say;
and you'd like to please him, but feel too shy to offer it. That's like
me. I had it on my tongue just now to ask him to stand godfather--the
child's birthday being the same as his own. 'Twas the honour of it I
wanted; but like as not (thought I) he'll set it down that I'm fishing for
something else, and when it didn't strike him to offer I felt I couldn't
mention it."

"_I'll_ ask him, if you like."

"Not on any account! No, please, you mustn't! Promise me."

"Very well."

"I