efore any sound
disturbed the sleeping gods, from my window I watched the Great Dipper
drop behind the crookedest old pine in the garden and heard the story of
the night-wind as it whispered its secret to the leaves.

Usually my patience was short with people who went mooning around the
house at all hours of the night when they should have been sleeping.
Somehow though, things seemed changed and changing. Coming events were
not casting shadows before them in my home, but thrills. Formerly I had
not even a passing acquaintance with thrills. Now, half a century
behind-time, they were beginning to burst in upon me all at once, as
would a troop of merry friends bent on giving me a surprise party, and
the things they seemed to promise kept me awake half the night. My
restlessness must have penetrated the thin partition of my Japanese
house, for when I went out to breakfast there sat Jane Gray, very small
and pale, but as bright-eyed and perky as a sparrow. It was her first
appearance at the morning meal.

Before I could ask why she had not rested as usual, she put a question
to me. "Well, what is it?"

"What's what?" I returned.

"Why," she exclaimed, "you have been up most of the night. I wanted to
ask if you were ill, but I was counting sheep jumping over the fence,
and it made me so sleepy I mixed you up with them. I hope it isn't the
precious cod-liver babies that are keeping you awake."

It was at Jane's suggestion that we had eliminated meat from our menu
and established a kind of liquid food station for the ill-nourished
offspring of the quarry women near us.

I assured Miss Gray that babies had been far from my thoughts. Then I
told her of my interview with Kishimoto San; of how Zura Wingate had
come to her grandfather's house; of her rebellion against things that
were; and that she was to come to me for private study. Had I not been
so excited over the elements of romance in my story, I would have
omitted telling Jane of the incident of the girl and the youth in the
park, for it had a wonderful effect on her.

Jane's sentiment was like a full molasses pitcher that continues to drip
in spite of all the lickings you give it. At once I saw I was in for an
overflow. It was the only part of the story she took in, and as she
listened, passed into some kind of a spell. She cuddled down into her
chair and shut her eyes like a child in the ecstasies of a fairy story.
She barely breathed enough to say, "The darlings!