," I said. "He'd do anything in all
this world for you that he possibly could; but there are some things no
man CAN do."

"I didn't suppose there was anything you thought Laddie couldn't do,"
she said.

"A little time back, I didn't," I answered. "But since he took the
carriage horses, trimmed up in flowers, and sang and whistled so
bravely, day after day, when his heart was full of tears, why I learned
that there was something he just COULDN'T DO; NOT TO SAVE HIS LIFE, OR
HIS LOVE, OR EVEN TO SAVE YOU."

"And of course you don't mind telling me what that is?" coaxed the
Princess in her most wheedling tones.

"Not at all! He told our family, and I heard him tell your father.
The thing he can't do, not even to win you, is to be shut up in a
little office, in a city, where things roar, and smell, and nothing is
like this----"

I pointed out the orchard, hill, and meadow, so she looked where I
showed her--looked a long time.

"No, a city wouldn't be like this," she said slowly.

"And that isn't even the beginning," I said. "Maybe he could bear
that, men have been put in prison and lived through years and years of
it, perhaps Laddie could too; I doubt it! but anyway the worst of it is
that he just couldn't, not even to save you, spend all the rest of his
life trying to settle other people's old fusses. He despises a fuss.
Not one of us ever in our lives have been able to make him quarrel,
even one word. He simply won't. And if he possibly could be made to
by any one on earth, Leon would have done it long ago, for he can start
a fuss with the side of a barn. But he can't make Laddie fuss, and
nobody can. He NEVER would at school, or anywhere. Once in a while if
a man gets so overbearing that Laddie simply can't stand it, he says:
'Now, you'll take your medicine!' Then he pulls off his coat, and
carefully, choosing the right spots, he just pounds the breath out of
that man, but he never stops smiling, and when he helps him up he
always says: 'Sorry! hope you'll excuse me, but you WOULD have it.'
That's what he said about you, that you had to take your medicine----"

I made a mistake there. That made her too mad for any use.

"Oh," she cried, "I do? I'll jolly well show the gentleman!"

"Oh, you needn't take the trouble," I cried. "He's showing you!"

She just blazed like she'd break into flame. Any one could fuss with
her all right; but that was the last thing on earth I wanted to do.

"You see h