er than Hobb's shoe,
and a haystack half as big as a seed-cake, and a duckpond that I could
cover with my platter. And I'd live there and play with it all day
long, if only I knew where the wind lives, and could ask him how to get
it."

"Don't start till to-morrow," jested Ambrose, "to-night you're too
sleepy to find the way."

Then he turned to his book, and Hugh was still at the window, and
Heriot gazing into the fire. And as he felt the child's head droop in
his hand, Hobb picked him up in his arms and carried him to bed. And he
alone of all those brothers had made no choice, nor had they thought to
ask him, so accustomed were they to see him jog along without the
desires that lead men to their goals--such as Ambrose's thirst for
knowledge, and Heriot's passion for beauty, and Hugh's lust for
adventure, and Lionel's pursuit of delight. And yet, unknown to them
all, he had a heartfelt wish, which, among other things, he had
inherited from his mother. For on a height west of the Burgh he had
made a garden where, like her, he labored to produce a perfect golden
rose. But so far luck was against him, though his height, which was
therefore spoken of as the Gardener's Hill, bloomed with the loveliest
flowers of all sorts imaginable. But year by year his rose was attacked
by a special pest, the nature of which he had not succeeded in
discovering. Yet his patience was inexhaustible, and his brothers who
sometimes came to his garden when they needed a listener for their
achieved or unachieved ambitions, never suspected that he too had an
ambition he had not realized, for they saw only a lovely garden of his
creating, where wisdom, beauty, adventure, and delight were made
equally welcome by the gardener.

Now on the March day following the night of the brothers' windy talk--

(But suddenly Martin, with a nimble movement, stood upright on his
bough, and grasping that to which the swing was attached, shook it with
such frenzy that a tempest seemed to pass through the tree, and the
girls shrieked and clung to the trunk, and leaves and apples flew in
all directions; and Jessica, between clutching at her ropes, and
letting go to ward off the cannonade of fruit, gasped in a tumult of
laughter and indignation.

Jessica: Have you gone mad, Master Pippin? have you gone mad?

Martin: Mad, Mistress Jessica, stark staring mad! March hares are pet
rabbits to me!

Jessica: Sit down this instant! do you hear? this instant! That's