ppreciative friends, bespoke the unshared services
of Hodgson, who was unfortunately necessary to me now that every
sudden damp day crippled my right shoulder (he came to me wearing one
of my old suits, by the way) and put a new steam-launch into Roger's
concealed boat-house. I presented Margarita with another and a larger
gift of pearls, it is true, but without one-tenth of the choking
excitement with which I had clasped that first single one upon her
neck.

The lady herself, however, balanced this equation; she was greatly
delighted, and if she had not, perhaps, perfectly appreciated the
first offering, more than atoned by her rapturous recognition of the
second.

"And how they must have cost!" she cried. "Jerry, you are too
generous--but I do love them!"

To think of Margarita's estimating the value of a gift!

We had famous talks that August, while Roger sweated at his new
task--making an island for us, no less!--and _petite Marie_ gathered
shells and buried them in tiny, wave-washed graves.

She took to reading that summer, and I read _Pendennis_ and _David
Copperfield_ aloud and she embroidered great grey butterflies all over
her grey gown for _Faust_, and the big brindled hound slept at our
feet near the beehives.

"Which do you like best?" I asked her curiously.

"Oh, the one about Mr. Pendennis is the prettiest," she answered
promptly, "I should have liked the man that made that book the best.
But Mr. Dickens knows about more things. He makes more different kinds
of people."

"Thackeray has been called cynical," I suggested.

"What is that, Jerry?"

I explained, and she shook her head.

"O no, that is not cynical. That is the way things are, Jerry. Only
everybody does not say so."

"Do you think," I asked, "that people really talk the way Mr. Micawber
talks? I never heard anybody. And certainly nobody ever talked like
his wife."

"No," she said thoughtfully, "I never did, either. But there must be a
good many people _like_ them, Jerry, I am sure. And if they knew as
many long words as Mr. Dickens, that is the way they _would_ talk, I
think."

I have never heard a better criticism of the literary giant of the
nineteenth century.

She never made the slightest secret of her affection for me nor of our
thorough comprehension of each other and our similarity of tastes.
Quiet always, or almost always, with Roger, with me she chattered like
a bird, and I could give her opinion on many matters of