forget her first glimpse of the gray old house. As
the motor-car neared the curve in the road which discloses the view
John knew and loved so well, he said to her:--

"Now, dearest; in just a moment. There!"

The house is screened from the road by an ivy-covered wall, great trees,
and the shrubbery. But Phyllis caught the very view John wished her to
have,--a bit of the west gable, and the window from which his mother's
handkerchief had fluttered many gay farewells to him.

Sir Peter stood by the sun-dial, in the garden, and listened, well
pleased, to John's eager voice, as he pointed out the spots endeared to
him by memories of childhood. The sun-dial! How he had pondered over the
quatrain, chiseled in the stone:--

"The Moving Finger writes; and having writ
Moves on--nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."

"My father used to sit reading aloud to my mother, near that hawthorn,"
said John, "and if she asked him for the time of day he was whimsical
enough to walk over here and consult the sun-dial, rather than his
watch."

They loitered in the neglected, overgrown garden,--soon to be bright
with flowers again,--a trysting-place for birds.

"My mother planned her garden anew each winter," said John. "She could
hardly wait for the soft air of spring to carry out her plans. She loved
the flowers. I remember her so clearly, working here, in a broad-brimmed
hat, with a pair of my father's gloves on her hands, while I played near
by. I had desperate adventures in this garden, and my play often ended
in my being half frightened--and seeking safety from imagined terrors,
in the refuge of her lap."

They went into every room of the old house; sunny rooms; there was need
of repairs, indeed, but Phyllis declared there should be no alteration.

"I want it to be just as it was," she said to Sir Peter.

And so, in June, they were at home there--and the garden was a riot of
color.

On a particular afternoon in June, Sir Peter, with his cigar, and John,
in flannels, writing, at a table under the trees, both looked up to see
Phyllis coming toward them, from the house, with her baby in her arms.

The garden was full of the perfume of roses. They blossomed everywhere.
There was a pink bud in John's buttonhole, and a red one in Sir Peter's.
Phyllis had a great bunch of white roses at her waist. Her gown was
white, too: soft and lacy and c