now he
didn't mind. She was somehow sure he wouldn't have said it if it had not
been true. Then Wallis's other words came to her, "He was always
laughing then," and suddenly there surged up in Phyllis a passionate
resolve to give Allan back at least a little of his lightness of heart.
He might be going to die--though she didn't believe it--but at least she
could make things less monotonous and dark for him; and she wouldn't
offer him plans! And if he objected when the plans rose up and hit him,
why, the shock might do him good. She thought she was fairly sure of an
ally in Wallis.

She cut her interview with Mrs. Clancy short. Allan, lying motionless,
caught a green flash of her, crossing into her room to dress, another
blue flash as she went out; dropped his eyelids and crossed his hands to
doze a little, an innocent and unwary Crusader. He did not know it, but
a Plan was about to rise up and hit him. The bride his mother had left
him as a parting legacy had gone out to order a string of blue beads, a
bull-pup, a house, a motor, a banjo, and a rose-garden; as she went she
added a talking machine to the list; and he was to be planted in the
very centre of everything.

"Seems like a nice girl, Wallis," said Allan dreamily. And the discreet
Wallis said nothing (though he knew a good deal) about his mistress's
shopping-list.

"Yes, Mr. Allan," he conceded.

* * * * *

It was Phyllis Harrington's firm belief that Mr. De Guenther could
produce anything anybody wanted at any time, or that if he couldn't his
wife could. So it was to him that she went on her quest for the
rose-garden, with its incidental house. The rest of the items she
thought she could get for herself. It was nearly the last of April, and
she wanted a well-heated elderly mansion, preferably Colonial, not too
unwieldily large, with as many rose-trees around it as her discretionary
powers would stand. And she wanted it as near and as soon as possible.
By the help of Mr. De Guenther, amused but efficient, Mrs. De Guenther,
efficient but sentimental; and an agent who was efficient merely, she
got very nearly what she wanted. Money could do a great deal more than a
country minister's daughter had ever had any way of imagining. By its
aid she found it possible to have furniture bought and placed inside a
fortnight, even to a list of books set up in sliding sectional cases.
She had hoped to buy those cases some day, one at a tim