a's face fell, but only for an instant.

"I've been thinking," she said, with a very convincing seriousness,
"that perhaps a sun-dial is not so important, after all. At any rate
it's not so important as the mother of a family; now, is it, Papa?"

"That depends upon the point of view," the professor opined. "As a
high light among the rose-bushes I should be constrained to give my
vote for the sun-dial."

Olivia sprang to her feet.

"That means that you are coming straight over with me to see Mrs.
O'Trannon," she cried, "and that you are going to have the whole
family packed off to Colorado quicker'n a wink! Come along, please!
There's plenty of time before dinner!"

* * * * *

"It's just another of Nature's miracles!" Olivia observed, as she and
her father stood one morning in late October watching the workmen pack
the sods about the beautiful pedestal, now securely planted upon its
base of cement and broken stone. "It always makes me think of the
wonderful things that came up in those tin cracker-boxes you used to
make such fun of. There really doesn't seem to be any place too
unlikely for Nature to set things going in."

The marble was but roughly hewn, in lines that held the suggestion of
an hourglass. The top only was smoothly finished, while here and there
on the curving sides the hint of a leaf, a blossom, a trailing vine,
came and went with the point of view, like cloud-pictures or the
pencillings of Jack Frost. It was as if a 'prentice-hand had tried to
express the soul of an artist, too self-distrustful to work more
boldly.

"Funny, how things come into your head," Olivia went on. "Do you know,
Papa, that day when I was helping Mrs. O'Trannon with her preposterous
packing and suddenly came upon this miracle hidden away under an old
bedquilt, the only thing I could think of was the way my first
pentstemons came out, 'white with purple spots,' exactly as I had
chosen them by the seed-catalogue. And to think that she had bought it
for a dollar of that poor stone-cutter's widow that was moving
out--bought it to make pastry on because the top was smooth and cold!
And then had never had time to make but one pie in the three years! I
wish you could have heard her tell about it. 'Faith, it cost me a
dollar, me one pie did, an' Mike says it's lucky it was that I didn't
make a dozen whin they come so high! Silly b'y, that Mike!' O Papa,
isn't it heavenly that they're tog