nt whirring, unagreeable to his mood; and, looking down upon the
sunny lawn, he beheld three lowly creatures. One was Genesis; he was
cutting the grass. Another was Clematis; he had assumed a transient
attitude, curiously triangular, in order to scratch his ear, the while
his anxious eyes never wavered from the third creature.

This was Jane. In one hand she held a little stack of sugar-sprinkled
wafers, which she slowly but steadily depleted, unconscious of the
increasingly earnest protest, at last nearing agony, in the eyes of
Clematis. Wearing unaccustomed garments of fashion and festivity,
Jane stood, in speckless, starchy white and a blue sash, watching
the lawn-mower spout showers of grass as the powerful Genesis easily
propelled it along over lapping lanes, back and forth, across the yard.

From a height of illimitable loftiness the owner of the cardboard
treasury looked down upon the squat commonplaceness of those three
lives. The condition of Jane and Genesis and Clematis seemed almost
laughably pitiable to him, the more so because they were unaware of it.
They breathed not the starry air that William breathed, but what did it
matter to them? The wretched things did not even know that they meant
nothing to Miss Pratt!

Clematis found his ear too pliable for any great solace from his foot,
but he was not disappointed; he had expected little, and his thoughts
were elsewhere. Rising, he permitted his nose to follow his troubled
eyes, with the result that it touched the rim of the last wafer in
Jane's external possession.

This incident annoyed William. "Look there!" he called from the window.
"You mean to eat that cake after the dog's had his face on it?"

Jane remained placid. "It wasn't his face."

"Well, if it wasn't his face, I'd like to know what--"

"It wasn't his face," Jane repeated. "It was his nose. It wasn't all of
his nose touched it, either. It was only a little outside piece of his
nose."

"Well, are you going to eat that cake, I ask you?"

Jane broke off a small bit of the wafer. She gave the bit to Clematis
and slowly ate what remained, continuing to watch Genesis and apparently
unconscious of the scorching gaze from the window.

"I never saw anything as disgusting as long as I've lived!" William
announced. "I wouldn't 'a' believed it if anybody'd told me a sister of
mine would eat after--"

"I didn't," said Jane. "I like Clematis, anyway."

"Ye gods!" her brother cried. "Do you think