nd
Peter's voice was very gentle.

"Ask your poets that. I was never one for the poets. I can sew a fine
seam and make my garden grow--nothing more. But you have the store of
poetry--and you have youth."

"There," said Peter, pointing to a lad of fourteen or thereabout who
was coming toward them, "there is what Sheila calls youth."

"And there," retorted Mrs. Caldwell, "is what _I_ call the heavy foot.
But Theodore Kent is a good boy. He's just not good enough for Sheila.
I can't understand the child's liking him!"

Theodore came up to them briskly, his cap off, his yellow-brown hair
shining in the sunlight with a vigorous glory, his face ruddy and
smiling. His body and his features were alike, strong and somewhat
bluntly fashioned, the body and the features of the very sturdy,
closely akin to the earth's health and kindliness.

"Where's Sheila, Mrs. Caldwell?" he asked, happily unconscious of a
critical atmosphere.

"In the back garden. What do you want, Ted?"

He lifted a battered volume. "She promised to help me with this
rhetoric stuff," he announced, quite unabashed at the admission of
Sheila's superior cleverness.

"Well, run along and find her." And Mrs. Caldwell glanced at Peter as
if to add, "Didn't I tell you he wasn't good enough for Sheila?"

"But what, after all, does an understanding of rhetoric amount to?
What has it done for _me_?" murmured Peter, answering the glance. And
then, as the boy still lingered before them, "I'll go with you, Ted. I
must make my bow to Sheila before I leave."

The back garden belied its humble name. The kitchen windows opened
upon it, it is true, but they did not discourage its prideful aspect.
Indeed, it might just as well have been a front garden, for it had
never been the shelter of the useful cabbage and its homely relations.
The young grass was close-cropped with the same care that had been
bestowed upon the front lawn, and simple, gay flowers flourished in
bright beds and along the smooth walk. Toward the end of the garden,
and as if for a charming climax, several cherry trees shook blossoming
branches to the spring wind.

And beneath those trees lay Sheila, her eyes lifted to their bloom, a
still, enraptured little figure, quite unconscious that intruders were
drawing near.

At sight of her, Peter halted and laid a staying hand on Ted's arm.
"Don't speak to her!" he whispered.

And so the two stood and looked at her, and yet she did not stir