are getting to look more like a boy's eyes should.
We'll make a man of you yet, Jims."

"He may be getting stronger but he's getting naughtier, too," said
Aunt Augusta, grimly. "I am sorry to say, Walter, that he behaves very
badly."

"We were all young once," said Uncle Walter indulgently.

"Were _you_?" asked Jims in blank amazement.

Uncle Walter laughed.

"Do you think me an antediluvian, Jims?"

"I don't know what _that_ is. But your hair is gray and your eyes are
tired," said Jims uncompromisingly.

Uncle Walter laughed again, tossed Jims a quarter, and went out.

"Your uncle is only forty-five and in his prime," said Aunt Augusta
dourly.

Jims deliberately ran across the room to the window and, under
pretence of looking out, knocked down a flower pot. So he was exiled
to the blue room and got into his beloved Garden of Spices where Miss
Avery's beautiful eyes looked love into his and the Black Prince was a
jolly playmate and old Martha petted and spoiled him to her heart's
content.

Jims never asked questions but he was a wide-awake chap, and, taking
one thing with another, he found out a good deal about the occupants
of the old stone house. Miss Avery never went anywhere and no one ever
went there. She lived all alone with two old servants, man and maid.
Except these two and Jims nobody had ever seen her for twenty years.
Jims didn't know why, but he thought it must be because of the scar on
her face.

He never referred to it, but one day Miss Avery told him what caused
it.

"I dropped a lamp and my dress caught fire and burned my face, Jims.
It made me hideous. I was beautiful before that--very beautiful.
Everybody said so. Come in and I will show you my picture."

She took him into her big parlor and showed him the picture hanging on
the wall between the two high windows. It was of a young girl in
white. She certainly was very lovely, with her rose-leaf skin and
laughing eyes. Jims looked at the pictured face gravely, with his
hands in his pockets and his head on one side. Then he looked at Miss
Avery.

"You were prettier then--yes," he said, judicially, "but I like your
face ever so much better now."

"Oh, Jims, you can't," she protested.

"Yes, I do," persisted Jims. "You look kinder and--nicer now."

It was the nearest Jims could get to expressing what he felt as he
looked at the picture. The young girl was beautiful, but her face was
a little hard. There was pride and vanity and som