and
lumbering periods, casting side and cross lights upon the subject,
introducing points the author had blundered past and objections he had
ignored, catching up lost ends, flinging a contrast into a paradox
and reducing it to a coherent and succinctly stated truth--in short,
flashing his luminous genius in a blaze of fire over pages erstwhile
dull and heavy and lifeless.

It is long since that Leith Clay-Randolph (note the hyphenated surname)
knocked at the back door of Idlewild and melted the heart of Gunda. Now
Gunda was cold as her Norway hills, though in her least frigid moods she
was capable of permitting especially nice-looking tramps to sit on the
back stoop and devour lone crusts and forlorn and forsaken chops. But
that a tatterdemalion out of the night should invade the sanctity of her
kitchen-kingdom and delay dinner while she set a place for him in the
warmest corner, was a matter of such moment that the Sunflower went
to see. Ah, the Sunflower, of the soft heart and swift sympathy! Leith
Clay-Randolph threw his glamour over her for fifteen long minutes,
whilst I brooded with my cigar, and then she fluttered back with vague
words and the suggestion of a cast-off suit I would never miss.

"Surely I shall never miss it," I said, and I had in mind the dark gray
suit with the pockets draggled from the freightage of many books--books
that had spoiled more than one day's fishing sport.

"I should advise you, however," I added, "to mend the pockets first."

But the Sunflower's face clouded. "N--o," she said, "the black one."

"The black one!" This explosively, incredulously. "I wear it quite
often. I--I intended wearing it to-night."

"You have two better ones, and you know I never liked it, dear," the
Sunflower hurried on. "Besides, it's shiny--"

"Shiny!"

"It--it soon will be, which is just the same, and the man is really
estimable. He is nice and refined, and I am sure he--"

"Has seen better days."

"Yes, and the weather is raw and beastly, and his clothes are
threadbare. And you have many suits--"

"Five," I corrected, "counting in the dark gray fishing outfit with the
draggled pockets."

"And he has none, no home, nothing--"

"Not even a Sunflower,"--putting my arm around her,--"wherefore he is
deserving of all things. Give him the black suit, dear--nay, the best
one, the very best one. Under high heaven for such lack there must be
compensation!"

"You ARE a dear!" And the Sunflower moved