y went home only to order the horses and
go to drive in the Park; Norton and she alone. It was a long afternoon
of enchantment. The place, and the people, and the horses and the
equipages; and the strange animals; and the lake and its boats;
everything was a delight, and Norton had as much pleasure as he
expected in seeing Matilda's enjoyment and answering her questions.

"Norton," said the little girl at length, "I don't believe anybody here
is having such a good time as we are."

"Why?" said Norton.

"They don't look so."

"You can't tell about people from their looks."

"Can't you? But I am sure you can, Norton, partly. People don't look
stupid when they feel bright, do they?"

Norton laughed a good deal at this. "But then, Pink," he remarked, "you
must remember people are used to it. You have never seen it before, you
know, and it's all fresh and new. It's an old story to them."

"Does everything grow to be an old story?" said Matilda rather
thoughtfully.

"I suppose so," said Norton. "That makes people always hunting up new
things."

Matilda wondered silently whether it was indeed so with _everything_.
Would her new dresses come to be an old story too, and she lose her
pleasure in them? Could the Park? could the flowers?

"Norton," she broke out, "there are _some_ things that never grow to be
an old story. Flowers don't."

"Flowers--no, they don't," said Norton; "that's a fact. But then,
they're always new, Pink. They don't last. They are always coming up
new; that's the beauty of them."

"I do not think _that_ is the beauty of them," Matilda answered slowly.

"Well, you'd get tired of them if they didn't," said Norton.

"Do people get tired of coming here?" Matilda asked again, as her eye
roved over the gay procession of carriages which just then they could
trace along several turns in the road before them.

"I suppose so," said Norton. "Why not?"

"I do not see how they ever could. Why it's beautiful, Norton! And the
air is so sweet."

"I never know how the air is."

"Don't you! But then you lose a great deal that I don't lose. I am
smelling it all the while. Are there any flowers here in summer time?"

"Lots."

"It must be lovely then. Norton, it must be nice to come here and walk."

"Walking is stupid," said Norton. "I can't see any use in walking,
except to get to a place."

"Norton, do you see a boy yonder, coming towards us, on a black pony?"

"I see him."

"It looks so like D