"They're gone," he said without further explanation.

"Who are gone?" inquired Kathleen.

"The Rose-beetles. They deposit their eggs in the soil. The larvae ought
to be out by now. I'm going to begin this very minute, Kathleen." And he
descended the terrace steps, entered the garden, and, seating himself
under a rose-tree, spread out his paraphernalia and began a delicate and
cautious burrowing process in the sun-dried soil.

"Fame is hidden under humble things," observed Geraldine with a resolute
effort at lightness. "That excellent brother of mine may yet discover it
in the garden dirt."

"Dirt breeds roses," said Kathleen. "Oh, look, dear, how earnest he is
about it. What a boy he is, after all! So serious and intent, and so
touchingly confident!"

Geraldine nodded listlessly, considering her brother's evolutions with
his trowel and weeder where he lay flat on his stomach, absorbed in his
investigations.

"Why does he get so grubby?" she said. "All his coat-pockets are
permanently out of shape. The other day I was looking through them, at
his request, to find one of my own handkerchiefs which he had taken, and
oh, horrors! a caterpillar, forgotten, had spun a big cocoon in one of
them!"

She shuddered, but in Kathleen's laughter there was a tremor of
tenderness born of that shy pride which arises from possession. For it
was now too late, if it had not always been too late, for any criticism
of this boy of hers. Perfect he had always been, wondrous to her, as a
child, for the glimpses of the man developing in him; perfect,
wonderful, adorable now for the glimpses of the child which she caught
so constantly through the man's character now forming day by day under
her loyal eyes. Everything masculine in him she loved or pardoned
proudly--even his egotism, his slapdash self-confidence, his bullying of
her, his domination, his exacting demands. But this new humility--this
sudden humble doubt that he might not be worthy of her, filled her heart
with delicious laughter and a delight almost childish.

So she watched him from the parapet, chin cupped in both palms, bright
hair blowing, one shoulder almost hidden under the drooping scarlet
nasturtiums pendant from the carved stone urn above; a fair, sweet,
youthful creature, young as her guiltless heart, sweet as her
conscience, fair as the current of her stainless life.

And beside her, seated sideways, brown eyes brooding, sat a young girl,
delicately lovely, alr