kward glance found the quiet of the picture
unbroken; again it was a page from the Greenaway book.

He reached the terrace; laughter and applause from the piazza caught his
ear. Fresh from the atmosphere he had left, he stared in amazement at
the scene before him.

Swift figures were scudding from one to another of the four great elms
that marked out a natural rectangle on the smooth side lawn.

"Puss! puss! Here, puss!" a high voice called, and a tall slender girl
in a swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the
square. A portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left,
but a romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail
of her gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across to her
partner's tree.

"One more, one more, colonel. You can't give up, now you're caught! One
more before we go in!" called the pink girl.

"Here's Mr. Varian. Come and help us out--the colonel's beaten!" added
Mrs. Dud.

"Here, puss! here, puss!" With excited little shrieks and laughs they
dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts.
Varian shook his head good-naturedly.

"Too late, too late!" he called back, and taking pity on the puffing,
purple colonel, he bore him off.

"Thank God! I'm just about winded! I'd have dropped in my tracks,"
complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the
shrubbery. In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned
toward each other an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed
contentedly.

"When I see that sort of thing, I think we've made a mistake--eh,
Varian?" he said, half serious. "It's a poor job, getting old alone.
Live at the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to
get asked again, nobody to care if you're sick, always play the other
fellow's game--little monotonous after a while, eh?"

Varian nodded. "Right enough," he said.

"Different ending to their route!" suggested the colonel, jerking his
elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery.

"That's it!" The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through
his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him.

He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind
the hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than
once he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy
for gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the
deserte