ing. Would
you have the nation stand with its hands in its pockets?"

Alma, cold as ice, challenged him: "Why should they call to us? We'll be
sorry some day that we went into it."

Out of a dead silence, a man said: "Not long ago, I went into a sweet
shop in England. A woman came in with two children. They were rosy
children and round. They carried muffs.

"She bought candy for them--and when she gave it to them, I saw that they
had--no hands--"

A gasp went round the table.

"They were Belgian children."

That night Jean said to Derry with a sternness which set strangely upon
her, "We must have friends in our House of Dreams. The latchstrings will
always be out for people like Emily and Marion, and Drusilla, and Ulrich
and Ralph--"

"Yes--"

"But not for Hilda and Alma."

THE NINTH DAY

It was on the ninth day that Derry waked his wife at dawn. "I've ordered
the car. It rained in the night, and now--oh, there was never such a
morning; there may never be such a morning for us again."

"What time is it, Derry?"

"Sunrise time--come and see."

Her window faced the east, and she saw all the pearl of it, and the faint
rose and the amethyst and gold.

"We shall eat our breakfast ten miles from town," Derry said, as their
car carried him out into the country, "and there's a lovesome garden--"

"With old-fashioned flowers and a fountain and a Cupid?"

"With all that--and more--"

The garden belonged to an old woman. For years and years she had planted
flowers---tulips and hyacinths and poppies and lilies and gladiolus and
larkspur and phlox and ladyslipper--there had always been a riot of color.

She had an old gardener, and she would stand over him, leaning on her
silver-topped ebony cane, with a lace scarf covering her hair, and would
point out the places to plant things.

But now in her garden she had strawberries and Swiss chard and sweet
herbs, and rows and rows of peas and young onions and potatoes, with a
place left for corn at the back, and tomatoes in every spare space.

And there was lettuce, and an asparagus bed, and everything on this May
morning was shouting to the sun.

"I had always thought," said the old lady to Derry, when he presented
Jean, "that a vegetable garden was uninteresting. But it is a little
world--with class distinctions of its own, if you please. All the really
useful vegetables we call common; it is the ones we can do without which
are the aristocrats.