mpty save for a few small sticks at the bottom.
With an angry frown he strode through the outer door and around the
corner of the house to the garden. At once then he came upon David,
sitting Turk-fashion in the middle of the path before the pansy-bed,
his violin at his chin, and his whole face aglow.

"Well, boy, is this the way you fill the woodbox?" demanded the man
crisply.

David shook his head.

"Oh, no, sir, this isn't filling the woodbox," he laughed, softening
his music, but not stopping it. "Did you think that was what I was
playing? It's the flowers here that I'm playing--the little faces, like
people, you know. See, this is that big yellow one over there that's
laughing," he finished, letting the music under his fingers burst into
a gay little melody.

Simeon Holly raised an imperious hand; and at the gesture David stopped
his melody in the middle of a run, his eyes flying wide open in plain
wonderment.

"You mean--I'm not playing--right?" he asked.

"I'm not talking of your playing," retorted Simeon Holly severely. "I'm
talking of that woodbox I asked you to fill."

David's face cleared.

"Oh, yes, sir. I'll go and do it," he nodded, getting cheerfully to his
feet.

"But I told you to do it before."

David's eyes grew puzzled again.

"I know, sir, and I started to," he answered, with the obvious patience
of one who finds himself obliged to explain what should be a
self-evident fact; "but I saw so many beautiful things, one after
another, and when I found these funny little flower-people I just had
to play them. Don't you see?"

"No, I can't say that I do, when I'd already told you to fill the
woodbox," rejoined the man, with uncompromising coldness.

"You mean--even then that I ought to have filled the woodbox first?"

"I certainly do."

David's eyes flew wide open again.

"But my song--I'd have lost it!" he exclaimed. "And father said always
when a song came to me to play it at once. Songs are like the mists of
the morning and the rainbows, you know, and they don't stay with you
long. You just have to catch them quick, before they go. Now, don't you
see?"

But Simeon Holly, with a despairingly scornful gesture, had turned
away; and David, after a moment's following him with wistful eyes,
soberly walked toward the kitchen door. Two minutes later he was
industriously working at his task of filling the woodbox.

That for David the affair was not satisfactorily settled was evidenced
b