otone. "You are very
kind and I am very fortunate to find a place like this. I already knew
something about irises and I've been reading up on the subject. We'll
try to hold our own with those little Japanese. As for the rheumatism,
since you are good enough to inquire, Miss Galland, it's about the same.
My legs are getting old. There are bound to be some kinks in them."

"You select those to cut--a great armful!" she slowly spelled out on her
fingers, clapping her hands with a triumphant cry of "How's that?" at
the finish.

"Your time has come! To the sacrifice!" he exclaimed to the flowers.

Very tenderly, as if he were an executioner considerate of the victims
of an inexorable law, he was snipping the stems, his head bent close to
the blooms, when a bumblebee appeared among the salvias a few feet away.
Perhaps army staffs who neglect no detail have made a mistake in
overlooking the whirring of bumblebees' wings in affecting the fate of
nations. These plunderers are not dangerous from their size, but they
have not yet been organized to the hep-hep-hep of partisanship. They
would as soon live in a Gray as a Brown garden, as soon probe for an
atom of honey on one side of the white posts as the other. This one as
it drew nearer was well to one side over Feller's shoulders. With eyes
and mind intent on his work, Feller turned his head absently, as one
will at an interruption.

"There you are again, my dear!" he said. "You must think you're a
battery of automatics."

He went on cutting chrysanthemums, apparently unconscious that he had
spoken.

"Bring them up on the veranda, please," Marta wrote on the pad, her
fingers moving with unusual nervous rapidity, the only sign of her
inward excitement.

Coming to the head of the steps of the terrace above, she looked back.
Feller's face was quite hidden under his hat and suddenly she seemed to
stub her toe and fall, while she uttered a low cry of pain. The hat rose
like a jack-in-the-box with the cover released. Feller bounded toward
her, taking two of steps at a time. She scrambled to her feet hastily,
laughed, and gestured to show that she was not hurt. He drew his
shoulders together and bent over spasmodically, gripping his knee.

"I can run off if something starts me just as spry as if I were twenty,"
he said. "But after I've done it and the kinks come, I realize I've got
old legs."

"Now I know he's not deaf!" Marta murmured, as he returned to his work.
She frown