methin' catchin' was new to me.
I begun to feel like I was about ninety years old and in the way.

Sunday forenoon was the limit, though. Sadie had planned to take 'em all
for a motor trip; but they declines with thanks. Would they rather go out
on the water? No, they didn't care for that, either. All they seems to
want to do is wander round, two by two, where we ain't. And at that Sadie
loses some of her enthusiasm for havin' bunches of lovers around.

"Humph!" I hears her remark as she watches Bobbie and Marjorie sidestep
her and go meanderin' off down a path to the rocks.

A little while later I happens to stroll down to the summerhouse with the
Sunday paper, and as I steps in one door Charlie and Helen slip out by
the other. They'd seen me first.

"Well, well!" says I. "I never knew before how unentertainin' I could
be."

And I was just wonderin' how I could relieve my feelin's without eatin' a
fuzzy worm, like the small boy that nobody loved, when I hears footsteps
approachin' through the shrubb'ry. I looks up, to find myself bein'
inspected by a weedy, long legged youth. He's an odd lookin' kid, with
dull reddish hair, so many freckles that his face looks rusty, and a pair
of big purple black eyes that gazes at me serious.

"Well, son," says I, "where did you drop from?"

"My name is Harold Burbank Fitzmorris," says he, "and I am visiting with
my mother on the adjoining estate."

"That sounds like a full description, Harold," says I. "Did you stray
off, or was you sent?"

"I trust you don't mind," says he; "but I am exploring."

"Explore away then," says I, "so long as you don't tramp through the
flowerbeds."

"Oh, I wouldn't think of injuring them," says he. "I am passionately fond
of flowers."

"You don't say!" says I.

"Yes," says Harold, droppin' down easy on the bench alongside of me. "I
love Nature in all her moods. I am a poet, you know."

"Eh!" says I. "Ain't you beginning sort of young?"

"Nearly all the really great men of literature," comes back Harold as
prompt as if he was speakin' a piece, "have begun their careers by
writing verse. I presume mine might be considered somewhat immature; but
I am impelled from within to do it. All that will pass, however, when I
enter on my serious work."

"Oh, then you've got a job on the hook, have you!" says I.

"I expect," says Harold, smilin' sort of indulgent and runnin' his
fingers careless through his thick coppery hair, "to produce my firs