Only I'd prefer to play the part of the King of Babylon, if
it's all the same to you, niecelet. How does the rest of it go, 'yet
not for a--' something or other 'would I wish undone that deed beyond
the grave.' Gosh, my dear, if things were otherwise, I think I could
understand how that feller felt. Get on your hat, and let's get out
into the open. My soul is cramped with big potentialities this
afternoon. I wish you hadn't grown up, Eleanor. You are taking my
breath away in a peculiar manner. No man likes to have his breath
taken away so suddint like. Let's get out into the rolling prairie of
Central Park."

But the rest of the afternoon was rather a failure. The Park had that
peculiar bleakness that foreruns the first promise of spring. The
children, that six weeks before were playing in the snow and six weeks
later would be searching the turf for dandelions, were in the listless
between seasons state of comparative inactivity. There was a deceptive
balminess in the air that seemed merely to overlay a penetrating
chilliness.

"I'm sorry I'm not more entertaining this afternoon," Jimmie
apologized on the way home. "It isn't that I am not happy, or that I
don't feel the occasion to be more than ordinarily propitious; I'm
silent upon a peak in Darien,--that's all."

"I was thinking of something else, too," Eleanor said.

"I didn't say I was thinking of something else."

"People are always thinking of something else when they aren't talking
to each other, aren't they?"

"Something else, or each other, Eleanor. I wasn't thinking of
something else, I was thinking--well, I won't tell you exactly--at
present. A penny for your thoughts, little one."

"They aren't worth it."

"A penny is a good deal of money. You can buy joy for a penny."

"I'm afraid I couldn't--buy joy, even if you gave me your penny, Uncle
Jimmie."

"You might try. My penny might not be like other pennies. On the other
hand, your thoughts might be worth a fortune to me."

"I'm afraid they wouldn't be worth anything to anybody."

"You simply don't know what I am capable of making out of them."

"I wish I could make something out of them," Eleanor said so
miserably that Jimmie was filled with compunction for having tired her
out, and hailed a passing taxi in which to whiz her home again.

* * * * *

"I have found out that Uncle Peter is spending all his time with Aunt
Beulah," she wrote in her diary