afternoon, as he lolled in his easy-chair under the open
window of his study, musing upon the ever-shifting phases of this vast,
complicated, urgent problem, some chance words from the sidewalk in
front came to his ears, and, coming, remained to clarify his thoughts.

Two ladies whose voices were strange to him had stopped--as so many
people almost daily stopped--to admire the garden of the parsonage. One
of them expressed her pleasure in general terms. Said the other--

"My husband declares those dahlias alone couldn't be matched for thirty
dollars, and that some of those gladiolus must have cost three or four
dollars apiece. I know we've spent simply oceans of money on our garden,
and it doesn't begin to compare with this."

"It seems like a sinful waste to me," said her companion.

"No-o," the other hesitated. "No, I don't think quite that--if you can
afford it just as well as not. But it does seem to me that I'd rather
live in a little better house, and not spend it ALL on flowers. Just
LOOK at that cactus!"

The voices died away. Theron sat up, with a look of arrested thought
upon his face, then sprang to his feet and moved hurriedly through the
parlor to an open front window. Peering out with caution he saw that the
two women receding from view were fashionably dressed and evidently
came from homes of means. He stared after them in a blank way until they
turned a corner.

He went into the hall then, put on his frock-coat and hat, and stepped
out into the garden. He was conscious of having rather avoided it
heretofore--not altogether without reasons of his own, lying unexamined
somewhere in the recesses of his mind. Now he walked slowly about, and
examined the flowers with great attentiveness. The season was
advancing, and he saw that many plants had gone out of bloom. But what a
magnificent plenitude of blossoms still remained!

Thirty dollars' worth of dahlias--that was what the stranger had said.
Theron hardly brought himself to credit the statement; but all the same
it was apparent to even his uninformed eye that these huge, imbricated,
flowering masses, with their extraordinary half-colors, must be unusual.
He remembered that the boy in Gorringe's office had spoken of just one
lot of plants costing thirty-one dollars and sixty cents, and there had
been two other lots as well. The figures remained surprisingly distinct
in his memory. It was no good deceiving himself any longer: of course
these were the p