on it, and so thick that one was minded of Absalom:

... in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as
Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot to the
crown of his head there was no blemish in him.

And when he polled his head (for it was at every year's end
that he polled it: because the hair was heavy on him,
therefore he polled it:), he weighed the hair of his head at
two hundred shekels after the king's weight.

He was so vivid and so new to me that my whole being was breathless
with the wonder of him. I knew, of course, that he did not belong
to _my_ world at all. King's sons are for princesses, for those
human birds of paradise that flash, beautiful and fortunate, in
larger spheres than those prosaic paths trodden by a workaday woman
named Smith.

"What have you found?" he asked, in a delightful voice.

Alicia looked up. Her face was like the break of day for youngness
and freshness, and a wisp of a bright curl misbehaved itself on her
cheek, a flirtatious curl that knew exactly how to make the most of
its opportunities. The young man's eyes approved of it.

"We have found Love!" cried Alicia, breathlessly. "Sophy and I have
found Love in our garden! Isn't it wonderful and impossible and
exciting and delightful? But it's true! And it just goes with this
whole place!" cried Alicia, morning-eyed and May-faced.

The young man's glance came back to me. I should hate to be
untruthful, and have to meet so straight a glance!

"Why, yes. It is impossible, and, like all impossible things,
perfectly true," he agreed, with the golden flecks dancing in and
out of his eyes and a slow and lazy smile, a sort of secret smile,
curving his beautiful, mocking mouth. "Fancy finding Love, of all
things, in Sophronisba's garden!" A fine black line of eyebrow went
up whimsically. "And now that you have found him," said Mr. Jelnik,
"hadn't you better let me help you set him up?"

CHAPTER IV

THE HYNDSES OF HYNDS HOUSE

When the fine weather had taken the kinks out of Judge Gatchell's
joints, he came to see us--a tall, thin, punctilious, saturnine old
gentleman with frosty Scotch eyes and the complexion of a pair of
washed khaki trousers. Chaos reigned in Hynds House then, and he was
forced to pick his way, like an elderly and cautious cat, between
piled-up chairs, tables, and rolls of carpet. In the most stately
manner he parted the tails of his skirted coat, seate