les: "Now I am your little dog. You cannot be rid of me."

"Downie," says Uncle Theodore with his gruffest voice: "You have
known it the whole time!"

She began to whisper: "Had my brother--"

"And yet you wished, Downie--Maurits is lucky to be rid of you.
Such a foolish, deceitful, hypocritical Downie, such an unreliable
little wisp, such a, such a--"

***

Ah, Downie, ah, silken flower! You were certainly not a fortune-hunter
only; you were also a fortune-giver, otherwise there would be
nothing left of your happy peace in the house where you lived. To
this day the garden is shaded by big beeches and the birch tree
trunks stand there white and spotless from the root upwards. To
this day the snake suns himself in peace on the slope, and in the
pond in the park swims a carp which is so old that no boy has the
heart to catch it. And when I come there, I feel that there is
festival in the air, and it seems as if the birds and flowers still
sang their beautiful songs of you.

AMONG THE CLIMBING ROSES

I could wish that the people with whom I have spent my summer would
let their glance fall on these lines. Now when the cold, dark
nights have come, I should like to carry their thoughts back to
that bright, warm season.

Above all, I should like to remind them of the climbing-roses that
enclosed the veranda, of the delicate, somewhat thin foliage of the
clematis, which in the sunlight as well as in the moonlight was
drawn in dark gray shadows on the light gray stone floor and threw
a light lace-like veil over everything, and of its big, bright
blossoms with their ragged edges.

Other summers remind me of fields of clover, or of birch-woods, or
of apple-trees and berry bushes, but that summer took its character
from the climbing-roses. The bright, delicate buds, that could
resist neither wind nor rain, the light, waving, pale-green shoots,
the soft, bending stems, the exuberant richness of blossoms, the
gaily humming hosts of insects, all follow me and rise up before me
in their glory, when I think of that summer, that rosy, delicate,
dainty summer.

Now, when the time for work has come, people often ask me how I
passed my summer. Then everything glides from my memory, and it
seems to me as if I had sat day in and day out on the veranda
behind the climbing roses and breathed in fragrance and sunshine.
What did I do? Oh, I watched others work.

There was a little upholsterer bee which worked from morning till