idea in your darling head?"

"Why, because you've been havin' fresias planted in the garden--and in
your room--as long as they lasted through the spring. You'd never
thought of 'em before as I know of."

"You witch! You notice everything. Who'd believe it, you're so quiet?"

"Of course I notice things about you. I wouldn't be fit to be your
mother if I didn't. Now, do you feel like tellin' me things about
her?"

"I'm longing to," said Peter.

They forgot it was late at night. He told her everything, beginning at
the moment when he had plunged through the dryad door and going on to
the moment when he had lost, not only the girl, but her friendship,
though he said nothing of the Moon dress or the shut-up house. Even
then he did not stop.

"I must have done something inadvertently," he went on, "to make her
stop liking me all of a sudden. For she did like me at first. There
was no flirting or anything silly about it. I felt there was a reason
for her changing, and ever since, every day and every night, I've been
trying to make out what it could have been. I've thought the idea
might come to me. But it never has. That's partly why I'm so anxious
to find her--to make her explain. I was too taken aback, too--sort of
stunned--to go about it the right way when she changed to me at the
last minute there on the dock. Once I could understand, why, I might
start with her again at the beginning and work up. It would give me a
chance--the chance I once thought I had, you know--to try to make her
care. Maybe it would be no use. Maybe I'm not the kind she could ever
like that way, even if things hadn't gone wrong. But--but, Mother,
it's been just agony to think that all this time she's hated me
through some beastly misunderstanding which might easily have been
cleared up."

"My poor boy!" the kind voice soothed him. "I guess that's the worst
pain of all. I knew there was something hurting you, but I didn't
know 'twas as hard a hurt as this. But 'twill come right. I feel it
will--if she's really the right girl."

"She's the only girl!" exclaimed Peter. "You'd love her, and she'd
adore you."

"Tell me just what she looks like," commanded mother, shutting her
eyes to see the picture better.

Peter excelled himself in his description of Winifred Child. "Nobody
ever even dreamed of another girl who looked or talked or acted a bit
like her," he raved. "She's so original!"

"Why, but that's just what somebody _did_!" mother cri