s her dark hour of
travail without blessing her name and the name of her messengers,
whom, in the endowment called in memorial of her, Margarita sends to
them, to tend them and the children they bear, as Harriet helped her
and hers. She lies among them, a stone's throw from the corner-stone
she laid nearly twenty years ago, now, and many visitors have never
seen the tablet that lies along her grave--so thick the flowers are
always lying there.

"Mother says you are not to look so sad, Jerry dear, because it isn't
me that Freddy's marrying!" says Peggy softly, behind me, and I come
back to the present, with a jerk.

"Not Freddy, perhaps," I answer with pretended severity, "but some
other young sprig no better than Freddy, and then poor old Jerry may
go hang!"

She slips her firm little hand--Margarita's hand--into mine shyly.

"Now, Jerry, how silly you are!" she says, looking carefully to see if
I am teasing her or by any chance in earnest.

"How can I marry a young sprig, when I am going to marry you?"

"Since when?" I inquire sardonically.

"Why, Jerry!"

Her big eyes open wide, she plants herself before me and stares
accusingly.

"You know very well--you can't have forgotten? You and I and little
Jerry and Miss Jencks are going round the world when I am sixteen! To
Japan, and see the wistaria and the cherry blossoms and the five
hundred little stone Buddha-gods that get all wet with spray and the
red bridge nobody may walk on!"

"Anywhere else?"

"Yes, to Vevay and see where Mr. Boffin used to live and old Joseph
that told you when you were all grown big and went back,

"_C'est moi, Monsieur, qui suis Joseph: j' ai nettoye les premieres
bottes de Monsieur!_"

How well I remember those first formidable boots, and my manly
feelings when I clumped them down in the hall before my door for
Joseph to clean! Jerry and Peggy and I are going over every foot of
the old grounds--the school, where the little fellows still sport
their comfortable, round capes; the way, well trodden still, I'll
wager, to the old _patisserie_ with its tempting windows of
indigestible joys; the natatorium where we dived like frogs; the
English church where we learned the Collects and eyed the young
ladies' school gravely till it blushed individually and collectively;
the famous field where I fought the grocer's boy who cried "_a bas les
Anglais!_" three days running. (He beat me, incidentally.)

I find that all the old memories c