wopenny-halfpenny sun of her own, that he took her,
with Wiggleswick, the ducks and the donkey, into his close comradeship. It
was she who had ordained the carrots. She had hair like golden thistledown,
and the dainty, blonde skin that betrays every motion of the blood. She
could blush like the pink tea-rose of an old-fashioned English garden. She
could blanch to the whiteness of alabaster. Her eyes were forget-me-nots
after rain. Her mouth was made for pretty slang and kisses. Neither her
features nor her most often photographed expression showed the tiniest
scrap of what the austere of her sex used to call character. When the world
smiled on her she laughed: when it frowned, she cried. When she met
Septimus Dix, she flew to him as a child does to a new toy, and spent
gorgeous hours in pulling him to pieces to see how he worked.

"Why aren't you married?" she asked him one day.

He looked up at the sky--they were on the common--an autumn stretch of
pearls and purples, with here and there a streak of wistful blue, as if
seeking the inspiration of a reason.

"Because no one has married me," he replied.

Emmy laughed. "That's just like you. You expect a woman to drag you out of
your house by the scruff of your neck and haul you to church without your
so much as asking her."

"I've heard that lots of women do," said Septimus.

Emmy looked at him sharply. Every woman resents a universal criticism of
her sex, but cannot help feeling a twinge of respect for the critic. She
took refuge in scorn.

"A real man goes out and looks for a wife."

"But suppose he doesn't want one?"

"He must want a woman to love. What can his life be without a woman in it?
What can anybody's life be without some one to care for? I really believe
you're made of sawdust. Why don't you fall in love?"

Septimus took off his hat, ran his fingers through his upstanding hair,
re-covered his head, and looked at her helplessly.

"Oh, no! I'm booked. It's no use your falling in love with me."

"I wouldn't--presume to do such a thing," he stammered, somewhat scared. "I
think love is serious. It's like an invention: sometimes it lies deep down
inside you, great and quiet--and at other times it racks you and keeps you
from sleeping."

"Oho!" cried Emmy. "So you know all about it. You _are_ in love. Now, tell
me, who is she?"

"It was many years ago," said Septimus. "She wore pigtails and I burned a
hole in her pinafore with a toy cannon and she sl