ROLFE GIL SO
 
 BERTRAND SMITHS 
 ACRFS OOKS 
 54O PACIFIC. .VENUt 
 LONG BEACH. CALIF.
 
 THE 
 
 FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 A ROMANCE 
 BY 
 
 ROY ROLFE GILSON 
 
 AUTHOR OP " IN THE MORNING GLOW " 
 
 "WHEN LOVE is YOUNG" ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS 
 
 PUBLISHERS MCMIV
 
 Copyright, 1904, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 Published September, 1904.
 
 URL 
 
 TO 
 MY FATHER
 
 PART I 
 
 THE TWO SHADOWS
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 NCLE JERRY," said that school- 
 girl, Barbara, shutting my Pick- 
 wick in my hands, robbing my 
 mouth of its very pipe, and seat- 
 ing herself upon my knee, "did 
 you ever have any adventures?" 
 "Well "said I. 
 
 "You know what I mean," my niece 
 went on, her eyes widening, her voice 
 sinking to an undertone " I mean excit- 
 ing things, where the plot thickens 
 fights, or love-affairs, or h-hair-breadth 
 escapes!" 
 
 "Well," said I, gathering my strewn 
 wits, seeking some story in that eager face, 
 3
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 and finding none but the mildest of mem- 
 ories, " no, my dear." 
 
 "Oh, didn't you, Uncle Jerry?" 
 
 "N-no," I repeated, dropping my eyes, 
 hers were so half -reproachful. "Why, 
 yes," I said, brightening, "I did have a 
 fight once, now that I come to think of it. 
 Butch Duffy was the rearingest, tearingest 
 boy in school, and one day " 
 
 "Oh, I didn't mean that kind," said 
 Barbara. " I meant a man-fight." 
 
 "I'm sorry," I replied, "but I never 
 had a man-fight." 
 
 "Weren't there any wars to go to, 
 Uncle Jerry?" 
 
 "None to speak of that is, none 
 around where I lived." 
 
 " But you and Aunt Kate" 
 
 "Well, I shouldn't call them wars, my 
 
 dear." 
 
 For a moment then my niece looked 
 puzzled, she is such a sober bit of thing. 
 
 "You didn't let me finish, Uncle Jerry. 
 I was going to say : you and Aunt Kate ; 
 4
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 didn't you ever have any any romantic 
 well, times together?" 
 
 "Oh yes, many and many a romantic 
 time." 
 
 We were on firmer ground, my niece 
 and I. Deficient I may have been in 
 wars and rumors of wars, guilty even of 
 a gross negligence in those martial mat- 
 ters, but romantic times stars! I was 
 something of a man then, after all. 
 
 "What, for instance?" asked my niece. 
 
 "Do I understand," said I, "that you 
 ask particulars?" 
 
 "Urn." 
 
 She nodded. Her lips were parted as 
 she gazed off into that long distance which 
 even the shortest of little rooms provides, 
 her eyes her blue eyes shining with what 
 she saw there; I know not what, for I 
 never was a school-girl. To be one, judg- 
 ing from my niece's face, is something 
 of a day-dream long drawn out. 
 
 "Goon, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "Well," said I, "we walked, for one 
 5
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 thing, I remember, Sundays, in Beecher's 
 Lane." 
 
 "Don't stop, Uncle Jerry." 
 "We walked," said I 
 "In the moonlight, Uncle Jerry?" 
 " Oh yes, right in the right out in the 
 moonlight, you know, the beautiful, sil- 
 very 
 
 "Yes, go on, Uncle Jerry." 
 "We did. First we went on, on and 
 on, as I say right on past the old red 
 barn, and on past the dairy, and on past 
 the mill, till we came to the meadow-bars." 
 "And then!" whispered my niece, and 
 I swear she was holding her breath. 
 
 "Why, then," said I, "we just came 
 back again." 
 
 "Oh, Uncle Jerry!" 
 "Of course," said I; "what else 
 "But your hated rival, Uncle Jerry?" 
 "My what?" 
 
 "Your hated rival, you know." 
 "Ah! Well, you see, there wasn't 
 any." 
 
 6
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Didn't anybody love Aunt Kate but 
 you?" cried my niece, aghast. 
 
 "Oh yes yes, yes," I replied, hastily. 
 "Your aunt Kate had a great many ad- 
 mirers. Many and many a young fellow 
 would have been glad to become your 
 uncle, my dear." 
 
 " But didn't they challenge you?" 
 
 "How's that?" 
 
 "Challenge you to fight for her, you 
 know?" 
 
 "N-no; not that I remember." 
 
 Her face fell. 
 
 " I think they were a pretty poor lot 
 of sticks," she said. 
 
 " But you wouldn't have had them hurt 
 your uncle Jerry, would you?" I asked, 
 soothingly, smoothing her brown hair. 
 
 " No, but you would have whipped them, 
 of course," she said. 
 
 "Oh yes of course, I " 
 
 "In Beecher's Lane, Uncle Jerry!" 
 
 "Sure." 
 
 "In the moonlight, Uncle Jerry!" 
 7
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Dear me, yes!" 
 "With your sleeves 
 "My sleeves!" 
 
 " R-rolled r-rolled to your elbows ! Oh, 
 Uncle Jerry," she cried, throwing her 
 arms about my neck, "how I wish I'd 
 been there!" 
 
 " So do I. So do I, my dear. I should 
 very much like to have been there my- 
 self," I replied, and with no little fire, 
 though borrowed, I confess, from that 
 glowing face. Indeed, there was a mo- 
 ment then, with her eyes upon me, that I 
 even fancied it all might have happened 
 as she had said. 
 Barbara sighed. 
 
 "Then nothing ever really happened 
 to you," I heard her saying " nothing 
 novel-ish, I mean?" 
 
 "No," I said, crestfallen again. What 
 would I not have given, say, for a burglar 
 burgling in some midnight of my past? 
 "No, nothing novel-ish, my dear." 
 There was a silence. 
 8
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "I've been reading the loveliest sto- 
 ry," my niece confessed, in a hushed 
 voice. 
 
 "So I imagined," I replied. 
 
 "All about a hero, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "And his name?" 
 
 She pronounced it reverently. 
 
 " Bonny Prince Charley " ; and then 
 again, even more gravely than before, 
 and lingering tenderly upon each syllable 
 "Bon-ny Prince Char-ley." 
 
 "A charming fellow," I observed. 
 
 "Oh, you know him, then?" 
 
 "I've never met him, but I've often 
 heard of him," I explained. 
 
 "Uncle Jerry," said my niece, with 
 fervor, sitting bolt upright upon my knee, 
 "he was the loveliest man I ever read 
 about." 
 
 "But don't you think," said I, "that 
 as a matter of fact he turned out to be 
 a er trifle 
 
 " Oh, not at all, Uncle Jerry. The book 
 says " 
 
 9
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Ah, yes, the book! To be sure. I 
 had forgotten the book." 
 
 "He was gallant of person," chanted 
 my niece, quoting, I fear, " with a smile 
 so Oh, Uncle Jerry, if I were a man, do 
 you know what I'd do ? I'd go and be a 
 hero, too. I'd go and do things. Why 
 didn't you?" 
 
 "Go and do things?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well," said I, "I was always so busy, 
 you see, just pottering around making a 
 living that I" 
 
 "Heroes are awfully busy, too," said 
 Barbara, "but somehow they find the 
 time." 
 
 "I know," said I; "bujt you don't un- 
 derstand; you don't grasp the situation. 
 Don't you see has it never occurred to 
 you that if we were all heroes, every man 
 Jack of us, it wouldn't be wonderful at all 
 to be a hero, my dear?" 
 
 "I never thought of that," said Bar- 
 bara. 
 
 . 10
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Of course you didn't," I replied, with 
 all the reproach I could fairly hurl at her, 
 without, of course, actually hurting that 
 tender heart. " Remember, hereafter, that 
 some of us have to not be heroes in order 
 that heroes may be heroes, my dear." 
 
 The climax lay less in the words I chose 
 than in the nourish of my voice and hand. 
 
 "I see," said Barbara, "but I'd I'd let 
 the other fellows not be the heroes, then." 
 
 My sword was hers. 
 
 "That's very brave of you, my dear," 
 I said. "As for myself, you see, I have 
 always always from the first been an 
 ordinary man." 
 
 " Dear Uncle Jerry," she said, impulsive- 
 ly, taking my face in her soft little hands. 
 " Do you know, you must have been awful- 
 ly good-looking once. You have regular 
 apple cheeks, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "Tut! Apple nothing!" 
 
 "Round and ruddy," said my niece, 
 "and the loveliest, kindest old mouth that 
 ever " 
 
 ii
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Look here! I won't be coddled." 
 
 "Oh, Uncle Jerry, you're such a nice, 
 uncle-y goodman," she said, and with a 
 laugh, and roundly kissing me, bounced 
 suddenly to the floor again, where her 
 book lay open on the hearth-rug. 
 
 "Tut!" said I, and, ruffled, regained my 
 cold, black pipe. 
 
 "Uncle Jerry," said my niece, softly, 
 finding her place in that wondrous story, 
 "you couldn't look fierce if you tried." 
 
 "Humpf!" I retorted. "If you were 
 my child, I'd" 
 
 "Why, Uncle Jerry," asserted that im- 
 pudent young miss of teens, thrusting out 
 at me the red tip of her saucy tongue, but 
 so roguishly, so Barbara-ly, I had to 
 smile. 
 
 "Uncle Jerry, you wouldn't scare a 
 r-rabbit!" and was off with Charley.
 
 II 
 
 snr ilEAR Barbara. . . . She Jiad put 
 me in mind, somehow, of a lit- 
 tle boy I had known once, who 
 was to grow up and be a hero, 
 with men to love him living, and 
 girls, I suppose, to love him dead, 
 even as Charley. He was a bare-legged 
 little boy with wriggly toes, and his tou- 
 seled hair stuck up through a hole in the 
 top of a straw hat with a brim so tattered 
 there were sprinkles of sun on his tanned 
 face. He was not a clean little, boy ' ' For 
 how can you, mother, when the frogs stay 
 where it's all muddy and won't come out 
 at all?" He was a real, what you might 
 call spattered little boy, and no matter 
 how hard she sewed the buttons on, I 
 13
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 remember" Why, mother, they just came 
 right apart!" he said. 
 
 But he was to be a hero. He knew it 
 himself, for he had spelled his way through 
 the Third Reader and knew how heroes 
 came about, starting as little boys, every 
 mother's son of them starting in log- 
 cabins, even, and patches on their panties, 
 and ending, all dressed up, in the White 
 House, or on prancing horses, *and with 
 swords waving in their hands. 
 
 Was it not all written down for little 
 boys, how you could be a hero if you 
 tried? Then they would put you in the 
 history of the United States, with all your 
 dates, and even your middle name, and 
 what poor but honest parents you were 
 the son of and where. 
 
 Why, if that boy sat down anywhere 
 on a log, say, in the back lot, or out in 
 the hammock, or where there were story- 
 bookshe could think of the very hero 
 he was going to be, and I have even known 
 him to see it all so plainly in the air he 
 14
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 would jump to his bare feet, crying," Charge, 
 men!" when not another soul was there. 
 
 And another reason why he knew he 
 would be a hero was because he was smart- 
 er than other little boys except in 'rith- 
 metic, which did not count, for there 
 wasn't a book anywhere in the whole 
 house about a hero who was smart in 
 'rithmetic. 
 
 But joggerfy and hist'ry! 
 
 Of course, a hero would have to be good 
 in joggerfy, so as to know where the 
 quickest ways were to get anywhere be- 
 fore the enemy could (get anywhere), and 
 hist'ry, so as to know what the other 
 heroes did and how. 
 
 Now Aunty Sniffin lived just around the 
 corner by the Methodist church, and if 
 he happened to be there when she was 
 making things cookies or anything like 
 that so much the better. Climbing his 
 back fence, the little boy could look across 
 lots to Aunty Sniffin' s and tell whether 
 she was or not, and if she was, he could 
 15
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 just be going by which was usually Sat- 
 urday in the morning, and, gee ! no school. 
 
 So it happened, I remember, that he 
 told her once, with his mouth full of what- 
 ever it was that day, all about the partic- 
 ular hero he was going to be, and she 
 said : 
 
 "My/ my, my!" 
 
 And he said : 
 
 " Then I'll have you come and live with 
 us, Aunty Sniffin, in the White House, 
 and make all my cookies ; and you can sell 
 what's left over to the Senators if you 
 want to. I sha'n't care, just so you keep 
 a-plenty in the crock." 
 
 Aunty Sniffin laughed and said, "All 
 right," it was very kind, and she would, 
 and how soon should she pack up? 
 
 Then the little boy thought a moment, 
 and he said: 
 
 "Well, in about twenty-eight years, I 
 
 think, Aunty Sniffin, 'cause I'm seven now 
 
 and father says you have to be thirty-five. 
 
 They won't be ready for me awhile yet; 
 
 16
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 and, besides, I'll have a good.many things 
 to 'tend to first, I s'pose." 
 
 And Aunty Snifrm said for she was a 
 fine, old, soft-cheeked lady, and always 
 willing to do anything for the boy she 
 never had: 
 
 "All right, darling; I'll just wait for 
 you." 
 
 And that was forty-one years ago! 
 
 Forty-one years, my Barbara, since the 
 little boy told Aunty Sniffin forty-one 
 years last spring . . . spring, I think it was, 
 when he told her . . . spring.
 
 Ill 
 
 O, she could not wait for him, 
 he was so long about it, and, be- 
 sides, soon afterward he moved 
 away from where Aunty Sniffin 
 lived to another town. 
 
 It was a long journey, with 
 cakes and surrup in the middle of it, and 
 that thick, sweet, golden middle is the 
 only part that he remembers now. It is 
 like this to him : 
 
 First, there is nothing black, blank 
 nothing; then, suddenly, it is a grayish, 
 dawny, spooky kind of light (though he 
 does not remember being waked or dress- 
 ed) and he is sitting at a table with buck- 
 wheat-cakes right there in front of him, a 
 whole brown pile of them, hot and smok- 
 ing, on a plate; while over a wide and 
 18
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 smile-y kind of lip of something round 
 and fat, a tide of surrup not syrup, sur- 
 rup s-u-r, sur, r-u-p, rup, surrup is 
 pouring like Niagara but without its roar, 
 and falling in a sparkling puddle on the 
 cakes. Slowly, then, it spreads to a molt- 
 en lake, spilling, dripping over the crusty 
 buckwheat edges to the blue china and 
 all the while sits that little boy, wishing, 
 hoping, praying that it may not stop. 
 
 But it did stop. There was a kind of 
 click and the flood ceased, and that broad, 
 that shiny, lippy thing withdrew, followed 
 cautiously by that little boy's bright eyes, 
 lest they lose track of it in the gloom ; and 
 there in the distant centre of the table it 
 squatted down with one big, golden drop 
 which it had not licked, hanging pendant 
 like a jewel from its gleaming mouth, and 
 about to fall, alas! and be lost forever. 
 And there it sat, that fat, round-bellied 
 jug, and smiled from ear to ear com- 
 placently. 
 
 The little boy kept one eye upon it as 
 19
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 he ate, lest suddenly it up and run, but it 
 stayed right there a-squat, and with never 
 a yawn from its jewelled lips till, not long 
 after, he passed his plate again. 
 
 Those were the griddle days when cakes 
 were cakes ! They were never burned and 
 never doughy, or what do they call it ? 
 sad; no, they were never sad, to eat or 
 remember. He recalls them all, that lit- 
 tle boy does, all that he ever ate, with 
 impartial gratitude all, that is, that he 
 ever ate as a little boy, for there are no 
 cakes like them any more. There was a 
 certain crustiness about their edges then, 
 a certain grace about their middles, so that 
 while six in those days were a bagatelle, 
 four of these modern cakes are quite a 
 plenty. 
 
 Still, even that were easy to be borne 
 were it not for another and a sadder loss. 
 He did not know it then, that little boy 
 eating those cakes in that wintry dawn 
 with the distant sound of frying in his 
 ears; he did not dream that he devoured 
 
 20
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 there all that was left of that golden flood 
 the last sweet, sparkling dregs of that 
 Falstaffian jug ay, worse than that! the 
 very last of that magic stirrup ever made, 
 or barrelled, or sold, or poured on cakes ! 
 
 He ate the last! 
 
 For though he was to travel far and 
 wide once to New York, that is, on 
 business, and twice to Boston to see his 
 aunt; though he was to eat his cakes on 
 many a plate and winter's morning in the 
 years to come (in years that have inter- 
 vened!) he was nev-er, nev-er to find its 
 like again. Stirrups there have been, sur- 
 rups there are to-day, surrups there will 
 be as long as there are jugs and cakes and 
 little boys but not like that! Not half 
 so golden-y, not half so thick and golden-y, 
 Barbara, not half so heavenly-molassesey 
 as the surrup in that never-to-be-forgotten 
 buckwheat middle of a long journey, the 
 rest of which is as black and void as a 
 night without a star. 
 
 Maple ? 
 
 21
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Fudge! Fiddlesticks! It was nothing 
 like maple not even the Vermont. 
 
 Sugar ? 
 
 Bah! 
 
 Golden Drip? 
 
 Nonsense! Just because it was gold- 
 en-y! 
 
 Why do you doubt him? Was he not 
 there ? Did he not roll it like nectar upon 
 the very tongue that moistens at its mem- 
 ory now? Has he not hunted for one 
 drop more of it one, only one, in Heaven's 
 name! but one drop more of that magic 
 surrup of his youth ? Has he not begged 
 them, cooks and waiters and grocers all? 
 Has he not told them just how it tasted, 
 just how it looked ? Has he not ransacked 
 the whole green waving world of the 
 Southern cane? 
 
 Ah, had he only known what he was 
 eating there, that little boy ! Had he but 
 known that the town he was bound for 
 would have no drop of that precious juice 
 in any of its jugs or joys, he would have 
 
 22
 
 THE FLOWER OP YOUTH 
 
 spread more thinly and munched more 
 slowly, and made it last. 
 
 But there he sat where, he knows not 
 perhaps at some uncle's where they 
 spent the night, half-way. There is a 
 woman there, now that he looks more 
 closely, or a something like one, shadowy, 
 standing by his side with the pancake- 
 turner in her hand, but felt rather than 
 seen; and there is a littler shadow, prob- 
 ably some forgotten cousin, probably eat- 
 ing by his side. 
 
 More he knows not, for all the silvery 
 light of that winter's morning falls like a 
 halo on that surrup-jug. 
 
 Then all is dark again.
 
 IV 
 
 HEN it is light once more, lo! 
 there is the little boy, but taller 
 by an inch or two, living, as 
 if he had lived there always, 
 in that town beyond the jug. 
 How long he has been there 
 for the life of him he cannot tell you 
 now, nor how he got there, nor how 
 they unpacked the furniture and set 
 it up again in that strange house, No. 
 12 Chaffinch Street. Yet it must have 
 been an exciting day for him when for 
 the first time he ran up those three gray 
 steps to the ample porch, which he cannot 
 remember climbing first at all ; when he first 
 crossed the threshold of that white door, 
 which it seems now to him, he tells me, 
 that he had always entered, turning its 
 24
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH ' 
 
 mottled, marble-y knob; when he went 
 inside to discover, room by room, up-stairs 
 and down, that new-old little house which 
 was to be the scene of so many of his 
 years. 
 
 Surely he must have noticed the honey- 
 suckle running wild upon the porch, for it 
 was spring. Did everything happen in 
 spring then, that it should be always 
 that flowery season whenever he sees him- 
 self as a little boy? Well, say it was 
 spring; for remember, we can only im- 
 agine that first day in Chaffinch Street, 
 since he does not recall a golden moment 
 of it himself. Call it spring. Then the 
 honeysuckle must have been green and 
 the lilacs at the bay-window must have 
 been blooming. But suppose they were, 
 and no matter how sweet the little winds 
 were blowing from them, doubtless he 
 scarcely would have noted them till he 
 had finished with the house itself, parlor 
 to kitchen, garret to cellar, and had come 
 outside again. Or would he have done 
 25
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 the outside first, do you think, my Bar- 
 bara? Pshaw! you cannot tell you are 
 not a boy; and he cannot tell he is not 
 a boy any longer. 
 
 We have called it spring, and the honey- 
 suckle green and the lilacs lilac. Let us 
 say then, too, that he ran first through the 
 odd little house, a gray-blue little house, 
 it was, with white trimmings. Was the 
 house empty that first time, or was the 
 furniture standing about mumpish -ly, 
 swathed in gunny-sack, or had they gone 
 before and settled it ere the little boy 
 came to that town beyond the jug? Let 
 us say they had settled it we said it was 
 spring. Yes, they had fairly settled it 
 and it is easier to say it so. They had 
 fairly put it in its new places, and the 
 white curtains were hanging at the front 
 windows, which began at the very floor 
 and grew tall and opened like doors on 
 the porch, to let little boys out and little 
 springs in. 
 
 And the carpets were down and the pict- 
 26
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 ures were up the dark pictures, the " Sign- 
 ing of the Declaration," and the " Washing- 
 ton Crossing the Delaware," and the 
 "Henry Clay in the United States Sen- 
 ate," all hung in the long, prim little par- 
 lor where the chairs were plush and red. 
 And in the dining-room, with its windows 
 looking out upon a bit of garden, were the 
 fruit pictures oranges, apples, grapes, 
 and plums in luscious piles that made 
 his tongue to swim. Not then, of course, 
 not that first day, for he was noticing the 
 bully place to keep his shinny-stick when 
 he should come in hot from play; too 
 much hurried he was, with rushing, clat- 
 tering up the stairs to that little room 
 they said was his, and noting from its 
 window the pear-tree's nigher limbs. And 
 why? Aha! my Barbara, you are but a 
 girl and would never guess. Sh! Now 
 if you, say, were a boy and they kept 
 you in o' nights when the other boys 
 were m'm looking, as it were, at melon- 
 patches by moonlight would not you 
 27
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 be grateful for a pear-tree's nigher limbs 
 close to your prison window-sill? Tut! 
 what were we saying? 
 
 He must have seen those things. He 
 must have seen, for instance, those five 
 enchanted windows in the vines where 
 sparrows slept that little bay, I mean, 
 through which the morning came all gold- 
 en and tinged with leaves. Down-stairs 
 that was, in the left-hand corner as you 
 faced Chaffinch Street, in a little room of 
 pipes and books and memories, where the 
 chairs were gardens of great red pome- 
 granate blooms. 
 
 Then he ran out - of - doors. We know 
 he did, though he does not remember. 
 He sprang out-of-doors to the level turf, 
 and squinted an eye at the pear-tree from 
 below. There, too, was a nigher limb just 
 low enough for the hands of a leaping boy. 
 
 Then he tried the garden and wondered 
 
 would they make him dig or would he dig 
 
 there only when he pleased and played, a 
 
 different matter. Then he smelled the 
 
 28
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 lilacs ! Ah, yes, then he would have smelled 
 them the lilac lilacs by the bay-window 
 and the white lilacs by the fence, and 
 would have seen that the fence was low 
 enough for a boy to vault without going 
 through the gate. Then, too, for the first 
 time, doubtless, he clapped his eyes upon 
 that sandy, pebbly spot under the water- 
 spout at the corner of the porch his 
 California where he washed for gold. 
 
 Odd, is it not ? odd that he should ever 
 forget that beginning there, which must 
 to his boyish eyes have been so wonderful, 
 but which, now looking backward, does 
 not seem to have ever been. Strange, 
 that after the surrup-jug and the dark- 
 ness which followed but could not obscure 
 its sheen, he is at once that school-boy, 
 taller by an inch or Vwo, as though noth- 
 ing no first, sweet breath of lilacs even 
 had intervened!
 
 V 
 
 ALLER, yes, but still a little boy, 
 as he now sees himself as he was 
 then, for even as it is always 
 spring there when he turns and 
 looks backward as far as he can 
 see, so also the boy he sees there 
 is a little boy, even when he has left 
 the surrup-jug far behind him and has 
 lived for a long time in Chaffinch Street. 
 Yet he was not so little as he then 
 saw himself or was it the hero he 
 saw there struggling within his meagre 
 frame ? 
 
 It was the hero. 
 
 He did not know himself from a major- 
 general. He was heard to tell Sherman 
 Tecumseh! to bring up the rear. He 
 was seen on the same afternoon for he 
 30
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 could twist time by the tail at York- 
 town returning a proffered sword. 
 
 Yet that was something which Chaf- 
 finch Street never could be made to under- 
 stand. If he said "Bread!" as Caesar or 
 Wellington or Grant would have said it, 
 they thought him short with them. Ay, 
 and chided, little dreaming that they 
 balked a field-marshal at his frugal meal. 
 
 If a fierce light shone in his eyes, if he 
 speared the pickles, if he charged the beef- 
 steak or outflanked the pie, they talked of 
 manners those poor though honest par- 
 ents whose names he would link with his, 
 and his dates, in United States history. 
 
 If he rose from the table and strode 
 away 
 
 "My, what a noise he makes!" they 
 would cry, peevishly. 
 
 If they had worn cavalry-boots, if for 
 them a charger had waited, champing its 
 bit, at the door tut ! what did they know 
 of the army, they who could not distin- 
 guish in the smart clatter of his heels upon
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 the floor the martial tread of a major- 
 general! He could not wear the stars of 
 his rank, it is true, but he could make 
 the noise of it, and he could cultivate the 
 sternness of its eyes and the pride and 
 bravery of its bearing. 
 
 It would have warmed your romantic 
 soul, sweet Barbara, if you could have seen 
 him then, that boy who was beginning al- 
 ready to be a hero like the one you read 
 of on the rug. To have been in his storm- 
 ing-parties, his forlorn hopes, would have 
 brought the blood to your cheeks and the 
 fire to your eyes. 
 
 There was that little affair of Bala- 
 klava, I think it was or Pickett at Gettys- 
 burg, I've forgotten which he said, but it 
 does not matter. It was in the back yard 
 anyhow, and it was just before the charge. 
 
 "Cookie," said he, "are you ready?" 
 
 "Ay, ay, sir," Cookie said, tightening 
 his belt. 
 
 "We're not in a boat, Cookie," said the 
 hero. 
 
 32
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "I mean, 'Yes, sir.'" 
 
 "You mean, 'Ready to the death!'" 
 
 "Ready to the death!" said Cookie, 
 fumbling at his belt. 
 
 "Cookie, my lad," said the hero and 
 there was an awful calmness in his face 
 as he laid his hand on Cookie's shoulder- 
 strap "be a soldier, Cookie." 
 
 Said Cookie : 
 
 "You bet I will!" and then, more ra- 
 diantly, remembering "Ready to the 
 death!" and fairly teetered for the charge. 
 
 But the hero held him with his brood- 
 ing eye. 
 
 " Cookie," he said, as they waited on the 
 heights for the bugle's blowing, "Cook- 
 ie, we may never see each other again." 
 
 Cookie started. 
 
 " If you are spared and I am taken, 
 Cookie, I want you to tell my mother 
 how I died." 
 
 Cookie paled. 
 
 "R-ready to the death!" he chattered, 
 but his eyes were wild. 
 33
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "And if I am spared," said the hero, 
 without a tremor in his voice, "and you, 
 Cookie, should be the bloody one " 
 
 Cookie sniffled sniffled, the coward! 
 like a baby, and with one horrid stare at 
 the valley of death below them, turned 
 and fled, bellowing, through the clover; 
 and stopped not, nor looked once over his 
 epaulets till safe by his mother's door. 
 
 "Cowardy, cowardy, cowardy-custard !" 
 roared the hero, following hotly on the 
 deserter's track. "Come back, you, Cow- 
 ardy-Cookie, Cow-Cookie, Cow-Cookie!" 
 
 But Cookie's mother, ampler to the eye 
 and far more dreadful than many guns, 
 sheltered her son. The hero paused. 
 
 Attack a woman ? 
 
 Never ! 
 
 A hero's place is fighting men. 
 
 "Forward!" the bugles blew, and he 
 charged alone .
 
 VI 
 
 HERE is always that time when 
 a boy is to be a general, just as 
 his dream at another is to sit in 
 a greasy cab and run a choo-choo 
 train ; and again to sail the deep 
 blue sea a long dream that is 
 apt to be; and yet again to drive a de- 
 livery-wagon like other free boys who do 
 not have to stay pent up in yards, but 
 rattle everywhere about the town, chir- 
 ruping to horses perhaps the baker's boy, 
 dipping, it may be, naughtily into cookie- 
 bags behind the seat, and knocking at 
 kitchen doors with fat mince-pies. 
 
 That is the age of assorted heroes when 
 
 you put your hand into the bag and draw 
 
 out a new one every morning, but there 
 
 comes a time when each boy chooses for 
 
 35
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 himself the sort of hero he is really and 
 truly always going to be. So it happened 
 that in the town beyond the jug, to the 
 boy who told Aunty Sniffin, to the one 
 whose champing charger waited at the 
 door, there came a vision so new and 
 wondrous in his sight, the sword dropped 
 from his fingers, falling so softly it was 
 never missed, and still lies rusting where 
 
 it fell. 
 
 Across the way lay a great yard, streets 
 on every side of it a mighty square of 
 green velvet spotted with gold between the 
 trees. There were oaks there and beeches, 
 elms and evergreens, a quiet forest in- 
 habited by birds and squirrels, and one 
 lone man in corduroys raking leaves. 
 Often the boy watched him through the 
 high iron fence, but the man kept raking 
 swish! swish! never once looking up, 
 never once smiling, till raking farther and 
 farther backward from the bars with those 
 cheeks between, he grew smaller and quiet- 
 er in the distance and disappeared among 
 36
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 the trees. Just to look at him ever rak- 
 ing there swish ! swish ! you would have 
 thought him dumb; but a boy named 
 Bugg for short, called Tumble-bug 
 once climbed the fence, and the man 
 said, 
 
 "Hi!" 
 
 And young Bugg jumped; so it was 
 known that the man could speak. 
 
 In the sunny centre of the square was 
 a huge house, almost a palace, though not 
 so bright. It was built of a dark-brown, 
 prison-colored stone, with a high, square 
 tower tipped by a gilded vane, and there 
 must have been a hundred windows, 
 though never a face looked out of one. 
 Many a time, on his school-way, the boy, 
 passing that great gate, gazed up the 
 gravelled driveway, but all was silent at 
 the other end, and grim. The lace cur- 
 tains hung motionless at the tall windows ; 
 beyond them, always, all -seemed black as 
 night, even in clearest day, so that he 
 wondered what they did within there 
 37
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 who kept so still whether in hiding, 
 whether dead. 
 
 Once, passing alone in a windy gloam- 
 ing, when there was not a glimmer of 
 light in all that house or square, he heard 
 a _ screa m ! and ran. But across the street 
 where the little houses were, the little 
 bright ones with beaming eyes, all in a 
 row, he breathed again. 
 
 There was his own, with a green lamp 
 shining through the five enchanted win- 
 dows in the vines, and a yellow lamp here 
 and a yellow lamp there, so that only to 
 pass it, as a stranger passing in the night, 
 you would have known just where to 
 run. And the door would have yielded 
 to the slightest pressure of your out- 
 stretched fingers, it had grown so used 
 to it, first swinging this way and then 
 swinging that for a school-boy all day 
 
 long. 
 
 Often he wondered if those massive 
 doors across the way could open surely 
 no boy could wield them, if they did; and 
 38
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 then again, who was it made their brasses 
 shine ? 
 
 If a knocker hangs upon a mighty door 
 and is all of brass, and is never dingy, but 
 shines like gold, day after day, month 
 after month, even in cold and wet; and if 
 a boy watches, watches, and no one, not 
 even a maid or a raker-man, goes near to 
 polish it what then? Do they do it by 
 night? And who are they? Do ghosts, 
 or witches or skellingtons ! polish brass ? 
 Or are there housemaids so hideous to 
 look upon that they work by dark? Or 
 do they keep Things tied in the middle of 
 big houses, and only let them out o' 
 nights? And do the Things polish the 
 brass? 
 
 That was what the boy wondered, one 
 day in spring, when he wandered, won- 
 dering, around the square. He had start- 
 ed at the driveway gate. He had kept 
 to the right and close to the fence, stop- 
 ping a moment now and a moment then 
 to peer through the iron bars. Aside from 
 39
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 the flutter of leaf or wing, all was silent in 
 the sun the great, brown house silentest 
 of all. Side and rear, its windows stared 
 at him through the trees, but not a cur- 
 tain trembled. There was not a sign of 
 expression in those great, cold, glassy 
 eyes. Not the faintest haze rose from the 
 tall chimneys where the ivy clung. Be- 
 hind the house the stables, too, were sleep- 
 ing with lids shut tight; not a single line 
 for a shred of wash-day rag to hang upon; 
 not a single milk-pan drying and shining 
 by the kitchen door-way in the 'sun, and 
 nowhere a living soul, human or dog or 
 purring pussy-catall dead and silent as 
 the tomb. 
 
 Yet what was that? 
 Suddenly, as he neared the gate again, 
 he heard a sound coming from some- 
 where yes no yes, wheels! Wheels 
 and hoofs crunching the distant gravel! 
 They were coming out ! 
 Running, breathless, he reached the 
 gate in time. Out of it coming appar- 
 40
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 ently from the very skies as at the waving 
 of some genie's wand dashed coal-black 
 shining steeds, gnashing their bits, their 
 harness jingling with silver chains, their 
 hoofs rattling like castanets on the stone 
 pavement, and behind them, perched high 
 as on a mantel-shelf, two ornaments in 
 blue and white, porcelain or wood for 
 aught that eyes could see, and stiff and 
 motionless as the gilded ones on circus- 
 wagons where the brass bands play. But, 
 ah! behind them and below in that great, 
 black, rocking - cradle slung on wheels, 
 leaning back grandly among the purple 
 cushions, a man, gray, white-vested, his 
 set face looking straight before him, his 
 gloved hands toying with a gold-tipped 
 cane; and by his side a lady glistening in 
 silk and lace, her cheeks like cream and 
 rose-leaves and wonderful for kisses if 
 one dared! 
 
 Not till the carriage in one wondrous 
 moment had almost passed him, standing 
 wide-eyed, wide-mouthed there by the
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 gate, did he see that vision on the little 
 seat _the little seat opposite probably 
 a hassock, he thought afterward to him- 
 self, for he, too, had ridden in carriages- 
 livery ones, surreys mostly, on bright Sun- 
 days, when they all went riding, the whole 
 family, and made room in front for a has- 
 sock with a little boy. 
 
 There she sat on the little seat opposite 
 the most beautiful creature he had ever 
 seen. She was like a fairy, oh, my Bar- 
 bara, and all in white, and with silken 
 curls falling from her broad - brimmed, 
 feathered hat to her shoulders, and lace 
 falling from her shoulders to her lap. And 
 there she sat with her gloved little hands 
 folded, and her face all pensive and cream 
 and rose-leaves like her mother's face, 
 and her eyes all starry bright and that 
 was all; for like a fairy she had come and 
 like a fairy she was gone again. 
 
 She had not seen him standing by the 
 gate. He stood there even after she had 
 disappeared in the farthest distance of 
 42
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 lower Chaffinch Street. Perhaps they 
 would come back for something, he 
 thought wistfully, but suddenly remem- 
 bered that if they had forgotten anything 
 they could buy another to use while they 
 were gone.
 
 VII 
 
 1HEY must have come back 
 again that day, pompous and 
 beautiful as before, passing swift- 
 ly with those prancing steeds, 
 d wonder of wonders ! - 
 'those precious figures still un- 
 broken on the shelf! The little boy saw 
 them often after that, saw oftenest the 
 woman with the little, white, golden girl 
 by her side, saw how like a queen the 
 mother sat in her shimmering carriage 
 robes, how like a princess in some night 
 Arabian sat her little girl. 
 ~R.a,t-a-tat-a.-tat-tat! 
 
 They were there before him in the gate- 
 way. 
 
 Rat-a.-ta.t-Si, tat-a-tat-a 
 They were gone again. 
 44
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Often when they had come back and 
 had disappeared up the speckled driveway, 
 crunching its pebbles gloriously beneath 
 them as they swept in state to the 
 French place you know with the little 
 roof to drive under and not get wet ; often 
 then the little boy, peering through the 
 fence, would watch long and earnestly the 
 house which had swallowed them; would 
 scan its windows, up-stairs and down, to 
 see if it grew more kindly at their entering. 
 No, you would not have known that a soul 
 was there. 
 
 Big houses do not notice little things like 
 souls, my Barbara. It is not well-bred to 
 relax a cold, stone face, lest the wrinkles 
 and crow's-feet creep upon it before their 
 time, under the cover of too much smiling. 
 It is only the little ones, the little houses 
 all in a row, that watch for folk, to beam 
 upon them as they reach the gate, and 
 beam upon them as they enter, and beam 
 and beam as long as they are there. They 
 are without a thought for the wrinkles that 
 4 45
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 are to come with too much time and beam- 
 ing, when they shall be old little grandmo- 
 ther-houses and sit and doze in the vines 
 and the sun. Sad and sorrowful they sit 
 when no one comes to them, not even a 
 child after school is done; and of all who 
 enter they love those best who climb their 
 steps and leave there battered little toys. 
 This you will find, my Barbara, to be true : 
 that the more a little house beams and 
 beams, the more little children climb its 
 knees in the warm spring sun. See it, 
 smiling with children! Listen, then; you 
 will hear it singing with them too. Many 
 a little house glows and hums all day, 
 mothering but one. 
 
 All this the boy did not dream of then. 
 No, only how grand and beautiful it must 
 be within, he thought within that house 
 which did not deign to notice him with 
 even a corner of any of its hundred eyes, 
 but looked before it into space, grandly, 
 as if nothing nothing at all! stood 
 watching through the fence. 
 46
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 True, it was only a neighbor boy mak- 
 ing up stories. All gold-y and like a 
 fairy tale it was, inside that house, he told 
 himself silk-lined and padded, and with 
 all soft, furry things for the little girl to 
 play upon ; for he remembered that other 
 princess in the story-book, and the seven 
 feather-beds on which she slept, and the 
 pea beneath them, and the black-and-blue 
 spot which it made, through all that seven- 
 fold softness, in her soft, white, royal back. 
 
 The butcher's boy had been inside the 
 fence, and had seen once with his own eyes 
 (for his cousin was a butler) the house of 
 a millionaire. He had seen, he said, "the 
 pitchers on the wall pitchers that cost 
 a thousand dollars oh, gee, yes, more'n 
 that!" He had seen the rugs that "e't 
 folks up when they was tigers!" He had 
 seen the deer-horns, and the stuffed yet 
 grizzly bears, and "a lot o' eagles, an' 
 spears, an' pistols, an' armer on the wall. 
 Gee, yes!" 
 
 "What's armer?" Cookie asked. 
 47
 
 "Huh! Don't yer know what armer 
 is?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Huh! Why, say, I seen one pistol so 
 big, one shot 'd kill ten burglars to once 
 oh, more'n that. Gee, yes." 
 
 "And do they ever shoot it any more?" 
 asked a major-general. 
 
 "Gee, yes." 
 
 " Does it make a big noise?" 
 
 "Well, you ought to hear it. You'd 
 think it made a big noise, I guess." 
 
 "How big, Dan?" 
 
 "Gee, yes." 
 
 "Dan, how big a noise does it make?" 
 
 "Why, say, the last time they shot it, 
 it blew both triggers off and killed the 
 fellow what was a-shootin' it." 
 
 "When was that?" 
 
 " Oh, I dunno. Three or four thousand 
 years ago." 
 
 And Dan had held it in his hands! 
 
 Yes, all like a fairy tale the life must be 
 within those walls, he thought else why 
 48
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 would the little girl stay so long there? 
 Why did she never come outside to play ? 
 There were wondrous places to play in in 
 her great, green square ; in it forest snow- 
 balls and smoke-trees and flowering cur- 
 rants and Japanese quinces grew, and 
 lilacs, one bush alone of them bigger than 
 all those lilacs, lilac and white, in his own 
 yard opposite; and there, under all those 
 blossoming shrubs, and under the trel- 
 lised wistaria, old and gnarled, it was all 
 like tents tents for those who happened 
 to be soldiers, Indian tepees for beaded 
 braves, houses all swept and dusted by 
 the new brooms of the wind, and to let, 
 unfurnished, to dolls and little girls. 
 
 She could have had a new house every 
 day to play in, that golden little girl, or a 
 whole green, busy little town of houses all 
 at once, in her magic forest, simply by 
 hanging on the fence some afternoon and 
 crying to mothers across the way : 
 "Come over, and bring your dolls!" 
 And the boys would have climbed her 
 49
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 trees for her, would have shot any bears 
 that might shuffle around and think of 
 her valentines! 
 
 Perhaps if he watched and waited but 
 long enough she would come some day and 
 play there near the fence and see him peer- 
 ing through the bars, and tell him her 
 first two names and ask him his. So he 
 waited, playing by himself and watching 
 lest she come when he was not looking 
 and go unseen. And the days passed, but 
 she did not come. 
 
 Wonderful, oh, my Barbara, must be the 
 house that can hold a child in the spring- 
 time. Was it spring there, too, within 
 those walls ? Were there boughs of emer- 
 ald, blossoms of milk-white pearls ? Did the 
 singing birds there build their nests, straw 
 by straw, chirp by chirp, whir by whir 
 those hanging nests, golden and shining, 
 with a cup for water and one for seed and 
 a bone for their little brown bills ? 
 
 There stood a little boy, wistful, waiting 
 outside her fence, and on its other side all 
 50
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 those green things in her magic forest 
 beckoning to him with flowered arms and 
 making room for him underneath just 
 room enough for a major-general and his 
 sword. Yet he dared not go to them. A 
 man, remember, lurked somewhere in those 
 leafy depths to pounce upon naughty, lit- 
 tle, playing boys ; and so he stood there 
 he, mind you, who was to be a hero ! and 
 pinched his cheeks tighter between those 
 bars and wished and wondered. 
 
 He wondered how the little girl could 
 see them there, those tents and tepees so 
 empty and forlorn, and those green lit- 
 tle houses looking so lonely for dolls to 
 shelter from the sun how she could see 
 them with those great blue eyes of hers 
 and not run to them, singing, run to them 
 swiftly with twinkling, slippered feet and 
 tossing curls, out of the great house into 
 the wind and the morning, to take their 
 outstretched blossoms in her hands and 
 smell them and tell them what she was 
 that day queen or fairy or little moth-
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 er, and, if the mother, how her children 
 did, and which was naughtiest, and how 
 many loaves she must bake with the 
 morn half flown. 
 
 Yet she never went to them, and the 
 little boy could not so there they stood, 
 lonely and childless and ever beckoning 
 in the sun and wind, morn after morning, 
 with the flowers of spring dropping, drop- 
 ping petal by petal, tear by tear.
 
 VIII 
 
 T fell so softly it was never 
 missed, that sword of a major- 
 general, somewhere by the fence. 
 After all, who could tell? For 
 years and years there might never 
 be another war to go to, whereas 
 at all times one could be a millionaire. 
 A millionaire ! 
 
 Is it not a gray-headed man with a gold- 
 headed cane in his hand? A millionaire 
 wears a white vest and rides in a carriage 
 with ornaments on the mantel - shelf ; a 
 millionaire lives in a house all shut and 
 silent, with a rose-and-cream-colored wife 
 inside, and a little, white, golden girl ; and 
 keeps in the bank down-town, all tied in 
 bags, one million dollars ! exactly one 
 million, mind! no more, no less. 
 53
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 And it is so easy to be one if you set 
 your mind to it and follow the recipe the 
 self-made men have left behind. First, 
 you must be an American. You need not 
 be born one, but you must come over if 
 you are not. Then it is best to be very 
 poor the poorer the better, as every 
 poor boy knows. Do they not tell him 
 in school how other poor boys started 
 started with nothing! "nothing, my 
 dear young friends. Not a lovely house 
 like yours, little boy on the front seat. 
 Not a beautiful school-house like this one 
 with the s-star-spangled banner floating 
 above it. No, my dear young friends, 
 whose bright, intelligent faces I see be- 
 fore me, they started with nothing and 
 became by dint of unremitting toil ..." 
 
 Even he was a poor boy once, that little 
 girl's father poorer than the boy now 
 peering through his fence. 
 
 Then when you are poor and an Ameri- 
 can, you must buy no candy, mind, nor 
 smoke, nor swear, but save your pennies 
 54
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 and obey your parents and stand one 
 hundred in arithmetic if you can. Sweep 
 out an office then sweep for your life, 
 my boy ! till they notice how well you do 
 it, and so, by dint of unremitting toil . . . 
 
 "Father," said the little boy who was 
 to be one, "why weren't you a million- 
 aire?" 
 
 Said the little boy's father, watching 
 the smoke rings rise, "I was always so 
 busy, son. Besides 
 
 "Besides what, father?" 
 
 "There's a sort of a knack about it, 
 little boy." 
 
 Ah, but the knack is so easy! It lies 
 in choosing what kind you will be. He 
 made it in oil, that little girl's father. 
 He would make it in what that little 
 boy? In what? Not oil. He would 
 have no grease. Say, rather, sugar 
 candy ! M'm, chocolate creams! 
 
 You see, my Barbara, he had the knack 
 of it, that little boy. 
 
 "And if I do, father," he said, "I'll 
 55
 
 THE FLOWER OP YOUTH 
 
 give you and mother a hundred oh, a 
 hundred thousand dollars!" 
 
 "Good gracious, son!" 
 
 "Apiece, father." 
 
 " Two hundred thousand ! My son, give 
 me your hand. Thanks thanks in ad- 
 vance and good luck, my boy." 
 
 Good luck, my boy! ... a deep, kind 
 voice it was, years and years ago, from 
 a chair all gorgeous with pomegranate 
 blooms . . . 
 
 So the little boy saved his pennies, one 
 by one, till there were seventy and three 
 just three and seventy, dear Barbara, 
 he remembers well, all safe in a little, red, 
 fretted bank with a little, white, fretted 
 door. When the door was opened lo! 
 before you there stood a little blue man 
 with a yellow tray in his hand ; and you 
 put your penny on the tray- bang! and 
 the door went shut again. And if you 
 shut it, peeking the while through the 
 fretwork, white or red, you saw the lit- 
 tle blue man passing the penny through 
 56
 
 a yellow slot to lie there forever more. 
 He was an honest blue man and never 
 kept one. 
 
 How did the little boy know ? 
 
 Ah ! There was a passage subterranean 
 yes, under the bank and three screws 
 to it, and a screw-driver on the kitchen 
 shelf! So the little boy knew. 
 
 He knew there were three and seventy 
 lying there. He first knew it when he 
 went to bed one night he had added 
 seven to sixty-six. He knew it next 
 morning when he rose. Next day he re- 
 membered by the corner store by the 
 soda-fountain the pleasantest way you 
 could go to school. He remembered it 
 when he passed the fountain on his noon 
 way home again, seeing the lists of syrups 
 not surrups now on the card in the 
 window : 
 
 VANILLA LEMON 
 
 ORANGE PEACH 
 
 STRAWBERRY 
 
 57
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 S-strawberry! Say it again. S-straw- 
 berry I Can you not see it, Barbara, that 
 rich, red syrup and the fizz? the bub- 
 bling fizz, rosy with strawberry juice! 
 
 Ah, yes, he remembered ; and three and 
 seventy less five are sixty and eight; and 
 what is five more or less compared to 
 the fizz you get? 
 
 Sixty and eight. 
 
 Sixty and eight when he went to bed 
 that night. Sixty and eight when he rose 
 next morn, for the little blue man was 
 honest by night as by day. If he had 
 gone straight home that nooning if some- 
 thing had happened as he stood on the 
 corner by the store, something in the 
 street, a dog-fight even, or runaway; if 
 his hat, say, had been blown by the 
 
 wind 
 
 Then he might never have seen the 
 
 thing. 
 
 But all was quiet. There was nothing 
 to look at but the thing in the window, 
 smiling upon him. Can wood smile? 
 58
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Yes, when it is a bat a ball-bat, say, 
 marked Dandy, and not such another in 
 the school. It smiled on the little boy 
 who was to be a hero or, rather, a mill- 
 ionaire. 
 
 And it only cost fifty cents! 
 
 Yet, if one is ever to save his money . . . 
 still, think of the bargain! Was it not a 
 Dandy? Did it not say so itself? Did 
 not the other boys say so? and to-mor- 
 row suppose it were gone? 
 
 And yet, again, if one is to save his 
 money, one must begin sometime. 
 
 So be it: sometime, then. 
 
 "Dear God," he said that night, it 
 was ; said it impulsively, not on his knees, 
 but standing, alone in his room, hands 
 by his side, heels together, as he some- 
 how fancied one facing his accuser should 
 "dear God, let's begin all over again." 
 
 So they did with just eighteen cents 
 
 between them in the little, red, fretted 
 
 bank and now that the ball-bat was out 
 
 of the way (standing in the corner, it was, 
 
 59
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 all ready and waiting for the morning 
 bells) now that the ball-bat was behind 
 him, the way would be easier, somehow, 
 and sweeter, would it not?
 
 IX 
 
 HAT became of the eighteen 
 cents no one knows but the lit- 
 tle blue man, gone like them- 
 selves this many a year. He was 
 honest as ever to the end, though 
 rather less blue as time went on, 
 and was last seen upon a garret stair. 
 The bank was empty, but he still stood 
 there with his tray in his little iron hands. 
 They began all over again, God and 
 that dreaming boy. He has told me 
 often of the day of the wonderful, roar- 
 ing, dancing day when he swallowed twice 
 to his former once, for they had found a 
 place for him to sweep, as it were, and 
 rise in its golden dust by unremitting 
 toil. 
 
 Down-town in an office they gave him 
 s 61
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 a desk, just big enough for his littleness, 
 by the door, and there he sat, and went at 
 their bidding and came at their calling, 
 and every Saturday stopped at a window 
 for a June-colored bill. And he swept so 
 well we will call it sweeping that they 
 noticed him by-and-by, just as the self- 
 made men had said, and came and told 
 him, and gave him a desk to fit his bigger- 
 ness, and farther from the door. And 
 so, dear Barbara, he began to be a hero 
 as he had planned, a little faster even 
 than he had hoped, and you should have 
 heard him whistle then and seen him 
 smile. 
 
 Why, even the little, white, golden girl, 
 grown tall and rosier, creamier, more like 
 a princess every day, though she sat no 
 longer on the hassock, was it not? 
 even she could not make him envious 
 any more. Would he not rise as her 
 father had, and leave, ere long, the 
 little gray-blue house with its vines and 
 sparrow-nests and its pomegranate chairs ? 
 62
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Would he not build him a house like her 
 father's house, in a great, green square? 
 Ay, one of these days, they would gild a 
 cane for him and he would ride behind 
 prancing horses and statuettes. One of 
 these days he would say, proudly: 
 
 " Father, you have worked long enough. 
 Come, you shall wear a white vest. Moth- 
 er, dearest, take off your thimbie. You 
 will strain your eyes. Keep them to gaze 
 proudly on your son." 
 
 How he would make them love him 
 then ! It would be so easy with the bags 
 all filled down-town. 
 
 "Mother," he would cry, taking her 
 face, soft as velvet, between his hands 
 "mother, just wait ..." 
 
 And then she would smile at him through 
 her glasses, the smile that a mother smiles 
 at her little boy grown big enough to lift 
 her in his arms. 
 
 "Will I have time to finish this slipper 
 first, my son?" 
 
 And would knit on, smiling. 
 63
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Father," he would cry, his young face 
 glowing, pacing that little room of books 
 and memories "father, just wait ..." 
 
 "Good luck, my boy." 
 
 Always "Good luck, my boy!" . . . 
 that deep, kind voice from a chair all gor- 
 geous with pomegranate flowers. And a 
 hearty way with him he had, even then 
 when his steps lagged, for he had toiled, 
 toiled unremittingly, all day long, all 
 through his years, and was not a hero 
 but only, as one might say, my Barbara, 
 a nice, uncle-y, goodman. 
 
 "Are you asleep, Uncle Jerry?" 
 "N-no," I said, reaching for the tobac- 
 co-jar, "I was only thinking." 
 "What were you thinking of?"' 
 " Something or other. Nothing much." 
 "Uncle Jerry!" 
 "What, my dear?" 
 "Uncle Jerry, you were asleep." 
 "I was not asleep." 
 64
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Uncle Jerry Down!" cried my niece, 
 pursing her lips. 
 
 "I was not asleep," I repeated, firmly. 
 
 " But your eyes have been shut ever so 
 long." 
 
 " Can't you think with your eyes shut ?" 
 I demanded, filling my pipe. Now, no 
 man likes to be caught sleeping, though I 
 don't know why, I am sure. It is nothing 
 to be ashamed of. Still I had not been 
 sleeping. 
 
 "Uncle Jerry," said my niece, putting 
 her hands on my knees and shaking her 
 head in my face accusingly, "you haven't 
 been making a sin-gle sound." 
 
 "My dear young lady," I replied, strik- 
 ing a match, "that doesn't prove any- 
 thing. Look out, or I'll burn your 
 nose." 
 
 " Oh, Uncle Jerry!" said my niece, sadly, 
 and pff! blew out my light. 
 
 "Come back if you dare!" I cried, but 
 she did not dare. 
 
 "Just see the moonlight," she said, 
 65
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 kneeling on the window-seat and peering 
 through the vines. 
 
 "It's my pipe-light you see," I said, 
 rising, and stood by the windows at her 
 side. 
 
 " Don't you wish that you lived in the 
 big house, Uncle Jerry?" 
 
 "No," I said. "It isn't anything to 
 what it used to be." 
 
 "What did it used to be?" 
 
 "A whole palace, five times as big." 
 
 "Did they cut it down, Uncle Jerry?" 
 
 "No. It just shrank," I said. "And 
 you ought to have seen the trees there 
 then, when I was a boy." 
 
 " Well, they couldn't have been any big- 
 ger," said my -niece. 
 
 "They were bigger." 
 
 "Fudge, Uncle Jerry! What do you 
 take me for?" 
 
 ' ' Fudge yourself !" I cried . ' ' They were 
 five times as tall." 
 
 "The trees were?" 
 
 "The trees." 
 
 66
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "What those trees?" 
 
 " Those very same identical trees, I tell 
 you. And there were five times as many 
 of them, too a whole green forest." 
 
 "Oh, they cut them down, I suppose," 
 said my niece, "for firewood." 
 
 " They did nothing of the sort." 
 
 "Well, land's sake, Uncle Jerry, what 
 did happen to those trees ?" 
 
 " Why, some got shorter, and some just 
 naturally went away." 
 
 "Went away!" cried Barbara. 
 
 "Yes," I replied, "went away of their 
 own accord." 
 
 "Uncle Jerry," said my niece, "you 
 talk like a fairy tale." 
 
 "Tut!" said I, and turned to my chair 
 again. 
 
 "Miss, that's my seat." 
 
 "Say Pretty, please." 
 
 "Pretty Please nothing!" I cried, hotly. 
 " You have my 
 
 "Aha! You said it! You said it!" 
 she cried, and bounded up again. "Take 
 67
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 your old chair, Uncle Jerry. It's all wob- 
 blety, anyhow. See how the arm 
 
 "Barbara!" I cried, sharply, "take 
 care! There isn't another chair like that 
 in the whole world." 
 
 " I should think not," she replied, scorn- 
 fully. "It's a disgrace to the house." 
 
 "Disgrace!" I cried. 
 
 "Yes," said my niece, calmly, "I'd put 
 it in the attic if I were Aunt Kate." 
 
 " I'd like to see you put it in the attic!" 
 
 "Well, I'd have it covered, then. What 
 are those funny old faded flowers, any- 
 how?" 
 
 "Funny old faded flowers!" I cried, and 
 could have boxed her ears for her idle 
 chattering. 
 
 Funny old faded flowers! 
 
 They were pomegranate blooms.
 
 T doesn't seem possible," my 
 niece continued, " that you could 
 ever have been a little boy in 
 this very room, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "Any more than it seems like- 
 ly that you may be a little old 
 lady here one of these days, sitting in 
 that very chair." 
 
 "I can't imagine myself old," said 
 Barbara. 
 
 " Nor I, my dear. I suppose I shall 
 always think of you as a child." 
 
 " But I'm not a child any longer. You 
 forget I'm" 
 
 "Almost a young lady then," said I. 
 
 "And if ever I am an old lady," she 
 
 went on, evidently not quite convinced 
 
 that she ever would be one, " and if I come 
 
 69
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 here to this little room, I wonder if I'll 
 remember this very time, Uncle Jerry 
 you sitting there and I here, and the 
 green lamp and the books and all?" 
 
 "Maybe," said I. 
 
 "Just think, Uncle Jerry me, with two 
 little gray curls!" 
 
 "Very likely, my dear." 
 
 "How funny!" 
 
 "Odd, isn't it?" 
 
 " And kind of s-hivery !" 
 
 "So?" 
 
 "Yes. I don't like to think about sad 
 things getting old and all like that." 
 
 "Getting old?" said I. 
 
 "Oh, I hate black things!" 
 
 " Is getting old black?" 
 
 "Yes and gray around the edges." 
 
 "So it is," said I, running my fingers 
 through my hair. 
 
 "Oh, I like bright things," cried my 
 
 niece, "and laughing. I know a woman 
 
 who has the loveliest laugh, all silvery 
 
 and like running up a scale. I think I'll 
 
 70
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 take music-lessons, Uncle Jerry, to learn 
 how to laugh." 
 
 "Not a bad idea," I admitted; "but 
 I fancy the music is in her soul, my 
 dear." 
 
 "M'm," she assented, absently. "And 
 I'll have my room bright, too, all my life 
 pink, I think. It's funny, though now 
 this room isn't what you'd call bright, 
 Uncle Jerry, with so many old rattletrap, 
 faded chairs and sad-colored books around, 
 and tobaccoey things yet it always 
 seems bright, somehow." 
 
 "Yes," I acknowledged, gazing about 
 me and squinting at those old familiar 
 friends. In a moonish sort of way, year 
 after year, I had gone on regarding them 
 as gay as ever they were when we were 
 young together. "How do you account 
 for it?" I asked. 
 
 "I don't know," she replied. 
 
 "Is it the grate fire, do you think, with 
 the old blue tiles around it?" 
 
 "Partly," she admitted, "and partly
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 the tall little windows, all in a row ; but 
 there's something else, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "There are some twinkling faces on the 
 shelves," I suggested. 
 
 " Y-yes, but a lot of dull ones, too." 
 
 "Well, take the tobacco smoke," said I, 
 blowing rings. " It's a lovely, lightish 
 kind of blue, when you come to notice it." 
 
 " M'm," said Barbara, as if she had bare- 
 ly heard. 
 
 "It's wonderful," I mused aloud, "but 
 there is something in the very air of this 
 little room as if it were never left alone ; as 
 if some of us were always here, or at least 
 had just run out a moment and would be 
 back again." 
 
 "I suppose that's because we leave 
 things around so," said my niece, glancing 
 at her book upon the rug. 
 
 "By George!" said I, "I believe you've 
 hit it, Barbara. We do leave things 
 around considerably, don't we?" 
 
 "So Aunt Kate says." 
 
 "Yes," I replied, vaguely remembering 
 72
 
 THE FLOWER OP YOUTH 
 
 a word or two I had heard upon the sub- 
 ject; "so she does." 
 
 I noticed then the quaint er artistic 
 arrangement of my pipes about the place, 
 so that wherever I might chance to roam 
 there, one or another of them seemed al- 
 ways handy. 
 
 "I try to pick things up," said Bar- 
 bara. 
 
 "Oh, so do I. I pick things up," I re- 
 plied. "Then I I lay them down again. 
 One can't be always carrying them about 
 with him, you know." 
 
 " That's so," said Barbara. 
 
 " I do leave a kind of trail behind me," 
 I confessed. 
 
 "That's what Aunt Kate says." 
 
 "So?" 
 
 "I think she's very patient, Uncle 
 Jerry." 
 
 "Patientest little woman that ever 
 lived." 
 "She doesn't nag one," said Barbara. 
 
 "Marvellous little woman, your Aunt 
 73
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Kate, and one of the few I have ever known 
 who leaves a man's things where he can 
 find them." 
 
 "That's apt to make the room mussy, 
 though," said Barbara. 
 
 "Nonsense!" quoth I. "A purely fem- 
 inine point of view." 
 
 Then for a time we were both silent. 
 She was leaning back in her chair with her 
 hands folded in her lap and the firelight 
 fondling her young, sweet face just such 
 a face as you meet mornings when the 
 bells ring. 
 
 "My dear," said I, "a happy room is 
 like a rose-jaf, don't you think? full of 
 all the fragrant little flowery things that 
 ever happened there. Even this little 
 room " 
 
 " Is like a tobacco-jar, Uncle Jerry," she 
 interrupted me, for she is younger than 
 she thinks, that niece of mine. 
 
 "My dear," said I, reprovingly, "you 
 forget that tobacco is good for flowers." 
 
 "And this little time we're having now, 
 74
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Uncle Jerry will it go into the rose- jar, 
 do you think?" 
 
 "Doubtless," said I. "I hope we have 
 added a petal or two to-night." 
 
 Barbara pondered. 
 
 "At last," I told myself, gazing at her 
 pensive face so full of poetry in the fire- 
 light "at last she has caught the spirit 
 of the thing." 
 
 "Well" she said. 
 
 "Yes," I encouraged her, gently, lest I 
 break the spell. 
 
 "I'll have the carpet pink, too," she 
 said.
 
 xr 
 
 NYWAY," she told me, "I can't 
 imagine this room without you, 
 Uncle Jerry." 
 
 " It got along very nicely with- 
 out me once," I replied, " and will 
 again. Somebody else's uncle 
 felt very much at home here, I dare say, 
 before my time. My father sat in this 
 very chair, reading and smoking, and I 
 played marbles here by the grate and 
 bumped his knees, and made him lose his 
 place with a lot of questions ; and now ' 
 "Now," said Barbara, "it is you sitting 
 and smoking and reading in the arm-chair, 
 Uncle Jerry, and I a-bothering you." 
 
 "Well, I shouldn't say 'bothering,' my 
 dear. But, you see, if this room could 
 talk" 
 
 76
 
 THE FLOWER OP YOUTH 
 
 "Just think!" cried Barbara. "What 
 is the most wonderful thing that ever hap- 
 pened here, do you suppose, Uncle Jerry?" 
 
 "Ah?" I replied. 
 
 Then she lowered her voice, glancing 
 over her shoulder at the windows so white 
 with moonlight it seemed as if the room 
 were open to the world and night. She 
 shuddered, and hugged herself. 
 
 "A m-murder, do you suppose, Uncle 
 Jerry?" 
 
 "Good gracious, no!" said I. "I hope 
 not, my dear. I shouldn't like to even 
 dream of such a thing." 
 
 "Or a love-affair!" suggested my niece, 
 who, by -the -way, considers The Abbe 
 Constantine the loveliest book in the whole 
 little room. 
 
 " M'm very likely, my dear," I replied, 
 more cheerfully, gazing at the five en- 
 chanted windows in the vines. "It is a 
 very sentimental little room, in a way, 
 and love affairs are sometimes very won- 
 derful." 
 
 6 77
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "With a beautiful girl in it," said my 
 niece, also glancing at the windows. 
 
 "By all means," said I. "A beautiful 
 girl with dark-brown hair and dark-brown 
 eyes." 
 
 " Blue eyes, Uncle Jerry 
 
 "M'm well, don't you think brown 
 eyes go better with the room?" 
 
 "Oh, blue are so romantic, Uncle Jer- 
 ry. They're in most of the songs, you 
 know." 
 
 " They rhyme with True," said I. " But 
 you must remember that it is a question of 
 what colored eyes she did have not what 
 she ought to have, my dear." 
 
 " I don't understand, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "Why, this girl is supposed to be one 
 who actually did live in this very room, is 
 she not?" 
 
 "Yes, but how do you know her eyes 
 were brown, Uncle Jerry?" 
 
 "True," said I. "I never thought of 
 that. Somehow they seemed brown to 
 me." 
 
 78
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "But as long as we don't know what 
 color her eyes were, Uncle Jerry, why 
 
 "Why, of course," I assented, "we can 
 make them blue, my dear." 
 
 "And she had a dimple," said my niece. 
 
 "Oh yes; two of them," I replied, 
 heartily. "Two of the prettiest dimples 
 you ever saw, when she laughed one 
 right here, and one right here. They're 
 gone now." 
 
 " Gone now ?" asked my niece. 
 
 "Why, yes. You would never there 
 I go again, supposing things. Still now 
 this girl, as I understand it, must have 
 been here quite a long while ago. So 
 her dimples, don't you see, must be gone 
 by this time." 
 
 " But we're only thinking of her as she 
 was then, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "True," said I. "Proceed, my dear." 
 
 " She had two dimples then, and a ta-11, 
 willowy form," said my niece. "A tall, 
 willowy " 
 
 "On the contrary," said I, "she was 
 79
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 short and plump. Short and plump, my 
 dear." 
 
 "Oh, do you think so?" asked my 
 niece, regretfully. 
 
 "Think so! Know so! She just came 
 up to my that is to say, as I see her now 
 as she was then, she was just about as tall 
 as my shoulder is now, my dear." 
 
 "Y-yes," said my niece, grudgingly, 
 "but as long as we don't know that she 
 was dumpy 
 
 "I didn't say dumpy. She was not 
 dumpy not at all dumpy. Short, yes 
 and plump but not dumpy, my dear. I 
 don't see her dumpy, at all." 
 
 There are words I hate. Dumpy is one 
 of them. 
 
 "Well," said my niece, "as long as we 
 don't know she was short and fat then, 
 why not make her willowy. It's lots 
 nicer." 
 
 " To be tall and willowy!" 
 
 "Oh yes, Uncle Jerry for a heroine." 
 
 "Well, just as you say, of course. It 
 80
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 doesn't make any particular difference, I 
 suppose, only in my experience the short 
 ones are much the cosier to have around." 
 
 "All right, then just as you say, Uncle 
 Jerry." 
 
 "Oh no have it your own way, my 
 dear." 
 
 " But I don't much care, Uncle Jerry, 
 I" 
 
 "No, have her tall, Barbara," I replied, 
 generously, " tall and willowy as you 
 please six feet, if you like a regular 
 grenadier." 
 
 "And her name," said Barbara, "was 
 Madelaine." 
 
 "Urn," said I, "well" 
 
 "Oh, I think Madelaine is beautiful!" 
 cried my niece, earnestly. 
 
 "To be sure," said I, "but" 
 
 " And it's so proud and haughty, Uncle 
 Jerry." 
 
 " Y-yes, but was she proud and haughty, 
 do you think ? Are short and plump peo- 
 ple apt to 
 
 81
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 " But we said she was tall and willowy, 
 Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "Proceed, my dear." 
 
 "And his name, Uncle Jerry, was 
 what?" 
 
 "Yes; her lover, you know." 
 
 "Oh. Well say, Billy." 
 
 "Oh, not Billy!" cried Barbara. "Not 
 such a common name. Call him " 
 
 "What?" said I. 
 
 "I like Augustus, pretty well, Uncle 
 Jerry." 
 
 "H'm Augustus," I mused. "But 
 don't you think isn't it doesn't it 
 strike you that it's a lee-tie bit big and 
 formal, my dear, for such a common little 
 room?" 
 
 " Oh, that doesn't make any difference," 
 said Barbara, "in a story." 
 
 "That's so," said I. "Call him Au- 
 gustus then in the story. Well?" 
 
 " Well," said Barbara, who, I was begin- 
 ning to suspect, had visions of authorship, 
 82
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 " they were here in this very room, long, 
 long ago." 
 
 "Long, long ago," I repeated ap- 
 provingly. 
 
 "And Madelaine," said my niece, "was 
 arranging the flowers here on this very 
 table." 
 
 "True!" I cried. "Her arms were full 
 of lilacs." 
 
 " Roses," said my niece. 
 
 "Lilacs," said I. "There are so many 
 in the yard, you know." 
 
 "All right," said Barbara, "lilacs then. 
 Madelaine was arranging the lilacs dain- 
 tily" 
 
 "Of course daintily," I assented. 
 
 "In a quaint, old-fashioned jar," said 
 my niece, her face glowing. 
 
 "Sure," said I. "And do you know 
 what that jar was, Barbara Jane?" 
 
 "No what?" asked my niece, as pa- 
 tiently as possible. 
 
 "An old butter-crock," said I. "Yes, 
 sir, it was an old butter - crock. There 
 
 83
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 wasn't a vase in the whole house big 
 enough for lilacs." 
 
 My niece looked at me suspiciously. 
 
 "Uncle Jerry," said she, "I'm afraid 
 you're mixing up things." 
 
 "Mixing up things?" 
 
 " Yes. This is a love-story, you know." 
 
 "True," said I, "but can't you have a 
 butter-crock in a love-story?" 
 
 "It would be a little odd, Uncle Jerry, 
 to say the least." 
 
 "I suppose it would," said I. "Yes, I 
 suppose it would. And was er Gustus 
 here, too, fixing the lilacs?" 
 
 "Oh yes, he was sitting in your very 
 chair." 
 
 " I see. And she was saying ?" 
 
 "That's just the point. What was she 
 saying?" queried my niece, wrinkling her 
 brow. 
 
 "What would she naturally be saying, 
 do you think?" I asked. 
 
 "Suppose you tell it, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 " But I'm not much of a hand at stories." 
 84
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Try, anyhow," said she. 
 
 "I take it," said I, "that she would be 
 saying something about the flowers er, 
 like this, for instance. ' Oh oh 
 
 "Augustus," prompted my niece. 
 
 "Thanks. 'Oh, Augustus 'no. No, 
 my dear, that doesn't sound right, some- 
 how." 
 
 "But his name was Augustus, Uncle 
 Jerry." 
 
 " Y-yes, but wouldn't she call him Gussy 
 or something like that for short, you 
 know?" 
 
 "Gussy! Horrors, Uncle Jerry!" 
 
 "Well Gusty, then." 
 
 "Mercy, Uncle Jerry!" 
 
 "Or even Augie," I suggested. 
 
 "Don't be silly! Madelaine would call 
 him Augustus." 
 
 " So she would. You're right, my dear. 
 I forgot her name was Madelaine. In that 
 case she would say, 'Oh, Augustus,' of 
 course 'Oh, Augustus, we shall be so 
 happy now in this little 
 85
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 " But she would be married to Augustus 
 then, if she said that," my niece protested. 
 
 "Oh yes," I said. "Of course. Mar- 
 ried. Married on a Thursday. Rainy in 
 the morning, but just at the ceremony 
 the sun came out. It was beautiful 
 beautiful, my dear. Yes, they were mar- 
 ried, and er Gustus had brought her 
 home to this very room to live till they 
 bought a bigger one." 
 
 "Oh," cried my niece, "but I thought 
 this was going to be a love-story!" 
 
 "So it is, my dear." 
 
 " But I thought a love story was before 
 you get married!" 
 
 "Well, so," said I, "it is sometimes. 
 But not always, my dear. It wasn't in 
 this case." 
 
 " But how are you going to make any 
 love-scenes then?" 
 
 "Why, easily enough. Here stood the 
 beautiful girl arranging the lilacs in the 
 butter-crock." 
 
 "Yes," said my niece, "but" 
 86
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Right in the butter-crock," I insisted, 
 firmly, "and she said what we've said 
 she said, you know. 
 
 "Yes 4 Oh, Augustus.' Go on, Uncle 
 Jerry." 
 
 " Well, then, said she, ' Oh, there were 
 some of the loveliest lilacs by the window 
 er Gustus, but I couldn't reach them.' " 
 
 " But she could have reached them." 
 
 " Why, no she couldn't. What are you 
 talking about?" 
 
 " Why, Uncle Jerry, she was tall and 
 
 "All right," said I. "All right. You 
 tell the story." 
 "Oh, go on, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "No. No, I I simply can't imagine 
 a tall, willowy female a-prowling around 
 this room. It isn't natural, my dear." 
 
 "Well, make her stumpy then, Uncle 
 Jerry." 
 
 "Stumpy! Stumpy!" I cried. "Not 
 at all. Who said she was stumpy ? Would 
 you call your aunt Kate for instance 
 for example stumpy?" 
 
 87
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Aunt Kate! Mercy, no!" cried Bar- 
 bara. "She's too sweet and cuddly for 
 anything." 
 
 "Exactly," I cried. "That's what I 
 say. That's what she was this here 
 Madelaine. Cuddly, I think you said?" 
 
 "Cuddly," said my niece. 
 
 "Cuddly, as you say," I repeated, "and 
 sweet." 
 
 "And then, Uncle Jerry?" 
 
 " Where was I ? I've lost my place." 
 
 "She couldn't reach the 
 
 "Oh yes; so he reached them for her, 
 you see." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 "Well," said I, warming to my theme, 
 now that the tall and willowy business 
 was out of the way and I could see the 
 picture, plain as it were, before my very 
 eyes, "there she stood by that very table 
 there with her arms full of lilacs, and er 
 Gustus sitting here in this very chair. 
 Why, I can see her now. And says she : 
 
 "'I love these old, flowery chairs and 
 88
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 books and things because you played here 
 when you were only a little boy er 
 Gustus, before I knew you.' 
 
 "Andsayshe, 'M'm.'" 
 
 "Not 'M'm,' Uncle Jerry!" 
 
 " Well, that was the gist of it, my dear. 
 I've forgotten the words. And then says 
 she for she was always so enthusiastic 
 from the first says she: 
 
 " ' If only we can keep our hearts young 
 er Gustus!' she cries, sitting on the arm 
 of that very chair there" (I had risen to 
 complete the tale). '"See! Even an old 
 butter-crock is young with lilacs in it. 
 If only we can keep flowers in our hearts, 
 always !' 
 
 '"The flower of youth,' says I er 
 Gustus, fondling her hair, for she was 
 mighty pretty, I tell you, with her big, 
 brown eyes and the bloom on her cheeks 
 so rosy it was hard to pass them. 
 
 "'We will keep young,' says she. 
 
 '"Oh yes,' says he, lightly enough, for 
 their life, he thought, was all before them ; 
 89
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 it didn't occur to him that it was mostly 
 right then and there, 'Oh yes/ says he. 
 
 " I forgot to say it was a Sunday morn- 
 ing, and the windows were open, and the 
 flowers outside, and the flowers inside, 
 you know well " 
 
 "Is that all, Uncle Jerry?'; 
 
 "Mm," said I. 
 
 "But where's the plot?'; 
 
 "The what?" 
 
 "The plot," said she. 
 
 " Do you have to have a plot?" said I. 
 
 "Oh yes," said she, "always in a 
 story." 
 
 " True," said I. " I forgot in a story."
 
 XII 
 
 W 
 
 HEN as we sat there dreamily 
 it came to me how like the Kate 
 of other days she was. It was 
 not her eyes or mouth or cheeks, 
 nor yet the color of her hair, but 
 altogether that grace of girlhood, 
 that flowerness, so lovely that I never 
 pass it even in the public thoroughfare 
 without an inward smiling. 
 
 We never had a little girl so once a 
 year they loan us Barbara. Ruling my 
 lap by right of conquest, she queens it 
 over me till only love for me remains no 
 awe any longer, scarce reverence it may 
 seem to some, but she tells me in a thou- 
 sand ways that next to Kate I am her 
 favorite of relatives. To be next in love 
 to Kate is love enough for me. To be
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 prized so highly by one who dotes on that 
 Young Pretender should be honor enough 
 for any uncle-y sort of fellow with his 
 youth behind him. 
 
 If I have lost her awe I have gained 
 her confidence a rarer jewel, for by its 
 rays I have caught such glimpses of a 
 girl's heart as should make me the better 
 man for it. So when she talks to me I 
 do not jest too much, but listen gravely, 
 even when I fain would laugh and then 
 learn often, to my surprise, what is no 
 laughing matter. 
 
 That which is now so rosy in Barbara's 
 heart I still find fragrant in the heart of 
 Kate, and love it so that I would have 
 all girls not grow up too much. Still, I 
 am scarcely the guide, I know, for a stren- 
 uous age like this. They all tell me I 
 have a weakness for tender things. The 
 men folk smile sometimes behind my 
 back, and even Barbara points out to me 
 the errors in my philosophy. 
 
 My niece arose. 
 
 92
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "I won't wait up for Aunt Kate and 
 the boys, I guess," she said, yawning. 
 
 "Good-night, my dear." 
 
 "Good-night," she said, and kissed me 
 sweetly. 
 
 " I'm so disappointed in the book I was 
 reading," she remarked, standing in the 
 doorway. " It began so beautifully and 
 turned out so sad." 
 
 "Ah, yes," said I. "Poor Charley!" 
 
 "I think it was mean!" said Barbara, 
 fiercely. "He was so young and hand- 
 some, and everybody loved him." 
 
 "Yes," I replied, "even the young and 
 handsome are disappointed now and then." 
 
 We were both silent. 
 
 "Well," said Barbara, "good-night, 
 Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "Good-night, my dear." 
 
 "I suppose," she added, still lingering 
 in the doorway, "if he had been old I 
 shouldn't have cared so much." 
 
 "Quite likely," I replied "if he had 
 been old, say, and uncle-y." 
 7 93
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 " I've noticed often," said Barbara, who 
 seemed to be lost in her own half -sleepy 
 thoughts, "that even in the nice and hap- 
 py books the first part, somehow, always 
 seems the best." 
 
 "True," said I. 
 
 "But if ever / write a book," she de- 
 clared, with feeling, "I'll be very careful 
 to scatter the young things flowers and 
 love-scenes and all like that way to the 
 end. In fact " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "In fact," she confided, a little self- 
 consciously, though even that is not un- 
 becoming in so young a girl, "I have 
 started one, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "A book?" 
 
 "Urn." 
 
 "A novel?" 
 
 "Yes. I've written the first chapter." 
 
 "In-deed! and what is it about?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "I call it," she replied "now you 
 mustn't laugh, Uncle Jerry." 
 94
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Never!" I swore. 
 
 "Well, the name is I've named it 
 Lady Madelaine's Secret." 
 
 "A-ah! And the secret?" 
 
 "Well that's the secret. "It would 
 be telling, Uncle Jerry. Wait till it's 
 done. Oh, it has a lovely plot!" 
 
 "I'll warrant," said I. 
 
 "It's a love-story,'* my niece confessed. 
 
 "Naturally," said I. 
 
 "I I didn't mean, Uncle Jerry, to crit- 
 icise your story, but you see you really 
 do have to have a plot. Now a love- 
 story is where two persons fall in love 
 very much, but somebody their parents 
 or their guardians, or maybe a rich old 
 relative well, anyway, somebody or some- 
 thing, won't let them. That's the plot." 
 
 "Ah, yes," said I, "it is now quite plain 
 to me." 
 
 "And a love-scene," my niece continued, 
 "is where they've slipped away, you know 
 from a ball or something, and meet on 
 the terrace." 
 
 95
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 ' ' The terrace, ' ' I mused ' ' why , of course, 
 my dear." 
 
 "Or some other place where roses are," 
 she told me. 
 
 "But wouldn't wouldn't strawberries 
 do as well?" 
 
 "Oh no, Uncle Jerry strawberries ! 
 The idea!" 
 
 "Well," I continued, "there are straw- 
 berries and strawberries." 
 
 "I know," said Barbara, "but roses, 
 Uncle Jerry 
 
 "Suppose," I interrupted her "sup- 
 pose there were wild roses among the straw- 
 berries?" 
 
 " But they're not double, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "No," I admitted, "they are single, to 
 be sure ; but are the roses in novels always 
 double, my dear?" 
 
 Barbara reflected. 
 
 "All that I ever read about," she 
 said. 
 
 "Well, then," I declared, firmly, "if I 
 ever write a book, I'll stick little pink 
 96
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 single roses into it, and strawberries here 
 and there." 
 
 "The idea!" she laughed. "How fun- 
 ny! I'm afraid you'll never make an 
 author." 
 
 "Why not?" I demanded. 
 
 " Uncle Jerry," she said, beaming upon 
 me indulgently from the topmost tip of 
 youth, "you're a dear, but you're not one 
 bit romantic." 
 
 "Mm!" said I. 
 
 "And you have to be awfully romantic 
 to be an author, you know. Oh, I think 
 you'll like my book, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 " I am sure of it," I replied, warmly. 
 " I want to see it the moment it is done." 
 
 "Well," she said, softly, her eyes shin- 
 ing so that I knew they saw a terrace 
 somewhere, "good-night, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "Good-night, my dear." 
 
 Well, she was right, that niece of mine. 
 There was no plot to it and without one 
 how shall a man find a story in his love? 
 
 When an uncle-y goodman looks back- 
 
 97
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 ward what does he see? Is it a terrace 
 scented with double roses and white with 
 moonlight ? Does he hear there the music 
 of violins? 
 
 Think of it only a few pink single 
 roses, pale stars among the strawberry 
 vines of a country lane! Moonlight, yes 
 and a little music of a quiet sort : drowsy 
 twittering of birds and wind in tree-tops, 
 and, it may be, a brook tinkling. But 
 you could not dance to it ; you could only 
 stroll to it, mostly silent, or sit somewhere 
 upon a stile, listening. 
 
 One slip of girl, she was, among a score 
 I knew, but had about her that which 
 made me wish she would look my way. 
 It all began with a boy sharpening a girl's 
 pencils for her and handing them back to 
 her across the aisle. The lane was a short 
 cut home for her after school, and the long 
 way around was the shortest way home 
 for me. 
 
 They shook gray heads at us, we were 
 so young. So, thanks to a common peril, 
 98
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 they drove all doubt away. Comrades at 
 arms we were in a noble cause. We un- 
 furled love's banner two doves, I be- 
 lieve, white upon an azure field; raised 
 our fair standard in Beecher's Lane and 
 annexed the world. It was a bloodless 
 victory. 
 
 The town has spread since Kate and I 
 walked in the lane together. It is all 
 houses and asphalt now, and they call it 
 Seventh Street. Where all is gray, then 
 all was green. Where sparrows chatter, 
 thrushes sang. Where cows stood lowing 
 by the bars on summer evenings, children 
 play now on the stone steps not children 
 like the barefoot boy who was to be a hero, 
 whose hair stuck up through a hole in his 
 torn hat, but clean, pretty little children, 
 shoed and stockinged and dressed in white, 
 and some with nursemaids to hold their 
 hands for them. Suppose they should 
 make mud-pies ! Mary Ann, preserve us ! 
 What, then, of those little white suits ? 
 99
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 But there is not enough clean, sweet 
 dirt in all Seventh Street to make a pie of 
 a proper pie, my Barbara, such as they 
 baked in the sun in Beecher's Lane. Oh, 
 the lane-y pies were proper pies, I tell 
 you! pleasant to roll, to sprinkle, to 
 mark on their upper crusts with the sign 
 of the tree, and set in the oven of the 
 summer-time till they were done. They 
 left their traces, it is true, but if you 
 played in a green lane long enough and 
 were not Called In, its little winds were as 
 towels and brush brooms. Street dirt 
 smuts and sticks. Lane dirt dries and 
 crumbles and goes back to its element. 
 The cleanest dirty boys in all the world 
 play in lanes. 
 
 Now the lane is gone, and they did not 
 even preserve its name. Seventh Street! 
 Think of the questions were it still called 
 Beecher's Lane! Who was this Beecher 
 who had a lane? Then some old codger 
 would tell its tale, a bit of history of a 
 bit of town how young man Beecher 
 100
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 hewed and dug in the forest wilderness, 
 and served his God there, and his country 
 and his state, and raised his sons ; and how, 
 at last, old man Beecher would be seen 
 walking on sunny mornings, leaning on 
 his cane, on the paved and very spot 
 where his cows had grazed. 
 
 Pshaw! He is dead and gone, and 
 buried, like his lane. Old fossil, I think 
 they called him in his later years always 
 talking of how the land lay when he was 
 young. He had helped to build a town, 
 it is true but Seventh Street is so con- 
 venient ! It tells so plainly how it runs 
 yes, between Sixth and Eighth! 
 
 No, you would not dream, my Barbara, 
 to look at Seventh Street, that rose and 
 strawberry vines had ever blossomed there ; 
 nor do you dream that youth once blos- 
 somed in the heart, say, of an uncle-y 
 goodman. 
 
 The sun still rises and burns there all 
 day long in Seventh Street, but without 
 a pie to bake; the moon still shines and 
 101
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 lovers pass there on the stone walks be- 
 neath the maples, mumbling lest you 
 catch some word of the old story. It was 
 all different when the turf was soft and 
 the thrushes sang and only the night winds 
 passed you with the scent of woods and 
 meadows and the sound of leaves. 
 
 Hill-sides, long since levelled, then star- 
 red with daisies, hid the world of men, 
 and two could walk there in the world of 
 God, where love grows wild as any flower. 
 Young hearts find each other quickest in 
 a lane. There simple words seem best, 
 and even silence has a voice when two are 
 listening. 
 
 First, I remember, it was as March there, 
 and all uncertainty now blast of winter, 
 now breath of spring; then a kind of 
 April, with violets and rue anemones where 
 the snow had been. How shall one say 
 the hour when they bloomed ? And with- 
 out the hour and word and plot, how, in- 
 deed, shall one make the love-scenes ? 
 
 I cannot remember I cannot remem- 
 102
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 ber the words we spoke, we have spoken 
 so many since. I do remember sitting on 
 a stile, and a frock Kate wore, white, and 
 sprinkled blue with some I think, for- 
 get-me-nots. It hit me rarely, I remem- 
 ber, it was woven so of May. Ever since 
 I have liked the gowns that school-girls 
 wear. 
 
 The stile was in the lane-side wall. An 
 oak shaded it, and behind it the brook 
 sang in a little glen, the stones of the ford 
 stringing a harp for the running waters. 
 Birds ! Why, the woods were full of them 
 and flowers ! there are not so many any 
 more. 
 
 There was a long hill there, waist-deep 
 with black-eyed what do you call them ? 
 Susans; and then again with purple as- 
 ters and golden-rod. In early spring the 
 banks of the rivulet were yellow with 
 adder's-tongues, and we found arbutus, I 
 remember, under the dead leaves and the 
 last March snows. 
 
 Thank God, I fell in love in the country ! 
 103
 
 THE FLOWER OP YOUTH 
 
 It is pleasant for a man in town to look 
 backward and see himself sitting on a 
 stile in a lane, and smell again flowers 
 and trees and hear a brook whimpering. 
 
 Sitting was pleasantest at the stile, but 
 the lane's far end was the most beautiful. 
 First, from the stile, the cart tracks 
 mounted gently into the very sky, and 
 there at evening, over that little hill, the 
 sun went down the lane on the other side, 
 followed slowly by the after -glow. Then 
 as you watched you would see the hedge- 
 rows at the top blossoming with stars. 
 
 Oh, the lane was fair enough at the 
 stile, and at the hill-top, as I say, was still 
 more beautiful, but beyond, at its farthest 
 end, I mean where it could not be seen 
 from the stile at all we knew it was love- 
 liest. There it was a prouder thorough- 
 fare. There, even as I sat with Kate, 
 with the singing brook behind us, there 
 at the lane's far end I saw her leaning 
 back grandly among the carriage cushions, 
 and all glistening with silk and lace, her 
 104
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 cheeks like cream and rose-leaves, and 
 wonderful for kisses if one dared! and 
 saw myself sitting beside her in a white 
 vest toying with a gold-headed cane, and 
 ornaments our own! upon the mantel- 
 shelf! 
 
 For even as we haunted you, little lane, 
 speaking doubtless of flowers and spring, 
 with their scent about us, even as we told 
 each other how rich we were richer, we 
 vowed, than the little girl grown tall and 
 princess-like in her great, green square 
 we were thinking silently of the lane's far 
 end, where by some means golden and 
 silken and I know not what we would find 
 happiness, counting the big, round, mint- 
 ed days with a pleasant chinking. 
 
 "When we get rich ..." we said some- 
 times. 
 
 "When our ship comes in," we told 
 each other, "we shall do this, and that." 
 
 Our eyes never were so bright you, 
 little lane, never were so beautiful with 
 gloaming and spring-time as when we 
 105
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 planned there what we would have some 
 day : more life than our fathers and moth- 
 ers had, dwelling so plainly; more noise 
 than they, more laughter, more nods and 
 smiles and hats lifted to us in the brave, 
 bright world outside more love within 
 than two folk sitting, faded, in faded chairs 
 beside a fire. 
 
 Such is the magic of lanes when love is 
 young, such is their rare atmosphere, you 
 see beyond you years and years and 
 trample beneath your feet the pink wild 
 roses God grows for you in your own 
 spring-time, as you smell in fancy the 
 hot-house ones you will grow yourself 
 when your summer comes.
 
 XIII 
 
 ITTLE more than a girl Kate 
 was that rainy Thursday when 
 the sun came out at noon, 
 brightening the drowsy little 
 church which we had wakened 
 from its mid -'week slumbers. 
 We had just stepped in a moment, I re- 
 member on our way from the berries 
 of Beecher's Lane to the lilacs of Chaffinch 
 Street. 
 
 Then, on a Sabbath morning with its 
 sound of bells, she tied on a gingham apron 
 and took down the old blue china from 
 the pantry shelf, and set a table in a room 
 of windows looking upon a bit of garden 
 where a boy once wondered, would they 
 make him dig ?] 
 
 I poked the fire for her and filled the 
 107
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 pail and pitcher at the well, and stood, 
 now here, now there, idle, hovering aim- 
 lessly, watching her cheeks reddening in 
 the kitchen glow. 
 
 "And can't I help?" I asked. 
 
 "You might bring a plate," she said 
 
 "What kind of a plate?" 
 
 "A plate for the toast." 
 
 So I brought her one. 
 
 "Oh, that's too small." 
 
 So I brought another. 
 
 "Oh no, Jerry, not a platter a plate." 
 
 " I know," said I, " but I thought a plat- 
 ter might be better," and brought a third, 
 at which she smiled. 
 
 " Isn't it right?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh yes," she said, "it will do nicely," 
 and beamed upon me. How was I to 
 know ? It was round and had little sides 
 to it, to keep the toast from sliding. Let 
 her tell her tale. She cannot prove 
 anything. The thing was broken long 
 ago. 
 
 "Jerry," she said, peering into cup- 
 108
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 boards, "do you know where your mother 
 kept the toasting-fork?" 
 
 "The toasting-fork? Why, I think 
 let me see the toasting-fork." 
 
 "Maybe she used a rack," said Kate. 
 
 "A rack, yes; it was a rack. Isn't it 
 beneath the sink?" 
 
 "No, it wouldn't be there. That's the 
 kettle place." 
 
 "Or in the cupboard by the stairs?" 
 
 "No; I've looked." 
 
 "The toasting-rack, the toasting-rack," 
 I repeated, vaguely then, like a flash, 
 remembered the very nail on which it 
 hung. I had driven it myself. 
 
 "A little lower down, my son," she had 
 told me. "I'm not so reachful as I used 
 to be." 
 
 "What a queer place for it," said my 
 wife. " I think we'll keep it there in the 
 other cupboard." 
 
 "Mother always kept it here," said I. 
 
 The door was open. Outside in the 
 sunny garden, with its prim little rows of 
 
 s 109
 
 THE FLOWER OF- YOUTH 
 
 green, and its currant and gooseberry bush- 
 es and grape-vines over against the fence, 
 the birds were busy in their nests. We 
 were building ours under the old roof -tree. 
 
 "Think of it, Jerry!" said my wife. 
 "Our first toast is on the fire!" 
 
 A pleasant steaming rose then near the 
 chimney, and our first coffee scented the 
 smoke-stained room. I had never much 
 heeded it, but now it seemed to me a 
 cheerful sort of place to work in. There 
 were morning-glories by the doorway. 
 A vagrant apple-bough, changing its mind 
 three times, was now making for the win- 
 dow-sill as fast as its twigs could carry it 
 for the very sill where mother cooled 
 her pies. 
 
 "See!" said I. 
 
 " Yes," said Kate. " Your mother told 
 me once ' Kate,' she said, ' I worked there 
 years and years by that kitchen window 
 in the blazing sun, when the tree was a 
 little thing, but it's cool and lovely now 
 for you, my dear.'" 
 
 no
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Kate turned her face from me. She 
 was always such a soft-hearted little thing. 
 
 "I'll call your father, Jerry," she said. 
 
 He was in the garden, a lonely figure 
 in a knitted jacket, smoking and thinking 
 in the Sabbath glow. Now he pulled a 
 leaf from the gooseberry vines or bent 
 stiffly to uproot a weed; then walked 
 slowly in the pathway, his hands behind 
 him, his eyes downcast, or stood quite 
 motionless, gazing upward and away as 
 if the sky there held some fairness he had 
 never seen before. 
 
 Kate stood a moment in the doorway. 
 
 "Come, father," she called. 
 
 He came quietly, knocking the ashes 
 from his pipe. 
 
 "The currants will be fine this year," 
 he said, and as he entered slipped one 
 arm about her waist. His lips were grave, 
 but his eyes smiled lovingly upon my bride. 
 And so we sat down together an oldish 
 man in a knitted jacket and his two chil- 
 dren who had promised to be always young, 
 in
 
 XIV 
 
 UMMER mornings I hurried from 
 our little world down three gray 
 steps and a gravelled pathway 
 edged with pinks into the great 
 world roaring with wheels and 
 men; at the corner turned and 
 waved my hand, and all daylong in crowded 
 streets and above my desk a face smiled at 
 me. Evenings I hurried back between the 
 pinks and up those three gray steps again 
 to the porch where honeysuckles clung, and 
 seized the mottled, marble-y knob in the 
 white door, just as when a boy I came in 
 flushed from play, but knowing now that 
 close behind it I should find a face upturn- 
 ed. And so, watched for every evening, 
 I would come from the great world where 
 112
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 I was to be a hero to the little world where 
 I was already one. 
 
 On a golden evening I have taken 
 that waiting face between my hands and 
 said, 
 
 "What do you think?" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Guess." 
 
 "I can't guess." 
 
 "What the manager said." 
 
 "Jerry, what did he say?" 
 
 "What might he say?" 
 
 "Tell me!" 
 
 " What would you like him to say ?" 
 
 "Jerry nor 
 
 "Yes. Two dollars more! He told 
 me to-night. Two dollars more a week, 
 Katie! Darlin', we'll get on yet." 
 
 Then I would tell her how he told me, 
 just where he stood when he did it, just 
 how he looked, smiled, lighted his cigar, 
 and left me to carry home my joy. 
 
 " We'll get on yet, Katie "this through 
 the suds. ..." And, mind, if Culver is ever 
 "3
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 head of the firm" that through the towel. 
 "Then" 
 
 "Oh, the steak!" my Kate would cry, 
 and be off kitchenward. 
 
 "Just wait, Katie," I would call after 
 her. " There'll be some one to broil your 
 steak for you one of these days." 
 
 " When we get rich we will have a beau- 
 tiful little kitchen," she would tell me, 
 her face radiant as she washed the dishes 
 while I toiled manfully at her side. "All 
 tiled, white and blue, and with pots and 
 kettles, copper and shining, on the wall, 
 and a little white porcelain sink to wash 
 my dishes in." 
 
 "But you won't wash dishes then." 
 
 "True," she said, almost regretfully at 
 the thought of the little white sink she 
 would never use. " I forgot. That's the 
 trouble with getting rich: you can make 
 work beautiful then if you wish, but you 
 won't want to work." 
 
 " You can play then, all day long. Wash 
 on, Katie," I would cry "did you rinse 
 114
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 these cups? Wash on, Cinderella. Cul- 
 ver is bound to be president one of these 
 days." 
 
 "One of these days, Katie," I used to 
 tell her when the dishes were put away 
 and I had her all to myself again, and 
 we stood in the windows looking at that 
 big house, pompous and frowning, across 
 the way, and without a blink for us " one 
 of these days, I'll come home to you 
 through a big gateway, in a big carriage, 
 and instead of this gingham you'll be wear- 
 ing an all-white lace andfurbelowy gown." 
 
 "I saw the Princess this afternoon," 
 she would tell me. "All in pale -blue 
 silk she was, and wore a great black hat 
 with snow-white plumes. Oh, she is beau- 
 tiful!" 
 
 "Just wait, my dear. Culver is sure 
 to win, and then ..." 
 
 "Meanwhile," she would tell me softly, 
 with her cheek laid close to mine, "we 
 will be happy here." 
 
 Yes, meanwhile meanwhile, till we 
 "5
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 were rich enough to buy the new things, 
 we would make the old ones do. Mean- 
 while the old little gray -blue house would 
 fairly shelter us till we built our new one 
 in a great, green square ; the old blue china 
 would do to eat from in the dining-room, 
 the old fruit-pictures could hang there a 
 little longer, and here in the library we 
 could use, for the time being, the old pome- 
 granate chairs. 
 
 Meanwhile evenings we sat in this very 
 room, three of us, father and Kate and I 
 everything made for words, nothing too 
 trivial for our little narratives, our little 
 arguments, our little jests. Meanwhile 
 Kate sat sewing there, there father with 
 his pipe and book, and here myself. 
 Meanwhile the clock ticked upon the shelf, 
 the fire spluttered upon the hearth when 
 it was cold, and there outside lay the 
 great world and its joys and sorrows of 
 which we told each other forgotten 
 words, fleeting as the moments in which 
 we uttered them. 
 
 116
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Meanwhile the stars glimmered and the 
 moon shone for us. Meanwhile the sun 
 rose, day after day, over the house-tops in 
 Chaffinch Street ; over the pear-trees, morn 
 after morning came to us, sweet-breathed 
 and rosy as ever in the world before. 
 
 " Yes," we said, "for the present, it will 
 do."
 
 XV 
 
 ND so meanwhile," I said aloud 
 half to myself I said it, half 
 to a mother with a little boy's 
 arms about her and his cheek 
 pressed close to hers. 
 
 "Meanwhile," I said again. 
 It was only a photograph in a gilt frame, 
 standing so near me on the table among 
 the books that I had but to turn my 
 head a little to find Kate's eyes and 
 Jamie's looking into mine. 
 
 " You rogue," said I, myself half smiling. 
 Jamie, there, was still in curls, though 
 already he had worn a sword. The pict- 
 ured Kate was so plainly proud of him, 
 her eyes shone so with ownership, her lips 
 drooped so with a sweet hopelessness of 
 ever smiling half her heart's delight 
 118
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 " Do you think," I mused, for as I look- 
 ed at her she seemed almost to be there 
 beside me, "that you were ever one-half 
 so beautiful in the lane ?" 
 
 "Dear-heart," I murmured. 
 
 Once I had thought a boy's love so much 
 more gentle than a man's could be, had 
 thought myself a wondrous lover in the 
 lane with a summer's evening to prompt 
 my wooing it is so easy to be kind where 
 flowers are and birds and brooks are sing- 
 ing. So it is easy to make a story of the 
 lane-love ; you make it chiefly of the lane. 
 
 "Dear-heart," I said, and as I gazed at 
 her, remembering, the lane-trysts seemed 
 no more to me than a little moonlight and 
 a dream or two, and a good many rustling 
 leaves. 
 
 The gray -blue house was made for chil- 
 dren. It was just little enough and viney, 
 and having once mothered a boy who was 
 to be a hero, it was never itself again till 
 it grandmothered one. Then there were 
 love-scenes with three true-lovers in them 
 119
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 rare in fiction but common enough in fact 
 and when there were only two, they 
 were always waiting for the third to come 
 to them. 
 
 "My two children," I used to call them 
 when we all played together, for Kate was 
 always such a child herself, though twenty- 
 three! an age so monstrous that she 
 sighed prettily for her lost youth, count- 
 ing one gray hair and unnumbered 
 brown. 
 
 The happier her thoughts were, the 
 more like a child she spoke them. Often, 
 evenings, I would hear a mumbling kitch- 
 en ward and wonder who had come. 
 Then if I listened, or tiptoed down the 
 hallway, I would hear, perhaps, spoken 
 as a child would say it 
 
 "Fee-fy-fo-fum!" 
 
 all to herself, those magic words at 
 which Care vanished like a cloud, and lo ! 
 before her, there stood a geni called Con- 
 tent. To those like Kate, who recall it 
 lovingly, childhood is a fairy wand. The 
 120
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 bitterest lips dare not repeat its rhymes 
 lest they smile, remembering. 
 
 So Kate would sit on the three gray 
 steps in Chaffinch Street with Jamie and 
 the Pidgeon boys who, counting girls, 
 were seven matching doggerel and dol- 
 ing cookies: round, sugared memories, 
 one bite of which restores one's youth. 
 
 There I would find her sometimes when 
 I came from work, and there evenings we 
 would sit awhile, long after Jamie had 
 gone to bed, listening to the older chil- 
 dren playing in Chaffinch Street tag, 
 pull-away, and once, to our surprise, fol- 
 low-your-leader over Kate's pansies, ex- 
 plaining that you could not be expected 
 to see such bits of things by dark. 
 
 At nine o'clock there was a sound of 
 calling from the porches, a noise of run- 
 ning here and lingering there, in the street ; 
 then like a flock of sparrows they were 
 gone. Sometimes we talked then, some- 
 times were silent. If we talked less of 
 poetry than in the lane, there was more of 
 
 121
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 it in what we said, for now it seemed to 
 us that even the common words were 
 lighted by a kind of glow a glow most 
 golden when we talked of Jamie. 
 
 "We must be careful, Kate. We are 
 always talking of that boy up-stairs." 
 
 "Yes dear little soul we must re- 
 member that others are not so interested 
 in our son. You should have seen him 
 to-day when I brushed his hair." 
 
 "What did he do?" 
 
 " Oh, nothing only he looked so sweet." 
 
 "And we must teach him, Kate, that 
 he is only a child. He must not expect 
 to be always in the centre of the stage, 
 you know." 
 
 "No, of course not." 
 
 "Children can be intolerable nuisances 
 to guests." 
 
 "Yes, we must be careful of that." 
 
 " It will be hard, Kate, of course he's 
 such a jolly little fellow." 
 
 "Isn't he a darling?" 
 
 " That's just it. He is so much prettier 
 
 122
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 and brighter than other children, we must 
 be doubly careful." 
 
 "And he is so cunning, Jerry." 
 
 " I know, but you must guard yourself 
 guard yourself, my dear. All day long 
 you have him on your mind, and when 
 night comes with callers you must try to 
 remember not to 
 
 "Jerry Down, who was it began to talk 
 of him last night when the Pidgeons came ? 
 I made it a special point not to say ' Jamie ' 
 once, till you 
 
 "Oh, well, last night, of course; they 
 were neighbors, and, besides, Mrs. Pid- 
 geon was talking of children and I hap- 
 pened to 
 
 "Of course you did. You happened 
 to remember Jamie." 
 
 "Tut! You were just waiting for me 
 to remember." 
 
 "Why, Jerry Down, I" 
 
 "You know you were." 
 
 "Jerry!" 
 
 "Katie!" 
 
 123
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 So we would warn ourselves against the 
 wiles of the Other Lover asleep up-stairs 
 lest he lead us into devious ways by his 
 too much smiling. And there, but two 
 of three, on the porch in those summer 
 nights, the love-scenes seemed to lack, 
 somehow to need ah well, dear Bar- 
 bara, it was as if you were to write a 
 love-scene with a terrace in it and forgot 
 the roses. 
 
 He had made, as it were, a kind of plot 
 for our little story something to wonder 
 at, something to smile at in a life all hum- 
 drum and everydays, with never a secret 
 like Lady Madelaine's to hold the interest 
 to the end. He was even a little what 
 did she call it, that girl Barbara ? a little 
 novelish, to keep us from yawning there 
 in the starlight. He gave us a hero who 
 would go through fire at the very thought 
 Kate shuddered and was always for going 
 up-stairs to tuck him in again but he 
 124
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 would emerge, we vowed, like any other 
 hero, triumphant in the end. 
 
 Yes, there was plot and mystery now in 
 our little love-story ; and parts to laugh at, 
 and parts Kate called the crying places; 
 parts where the hero smiled so winsomely 
 Kate clapped her hands; parts where she 
 held her breath and ran to rescue him, 
 the plot thickening. Every day was a 
 new chapter; every night Kate tucked 
 him in, to be continued in our next. 
 
 I rose. There, -through the windows in 
 the vines, beyond the curtains, filmy and 
 luminous as elfin veils, I saw the apple- 
 boughs broidering the moon-bright sky, 
 whose stars were pale. I stood for a long 
 time motionless, gazing through the panes 
 . . . threw Barbara's cape about my shoul- 
 ders, unlatched a window, and seated my- 
 self upon the sill. 
 
 The night air mingled with the tobacco 
 smoke, the scent of the last apples in the 
 
 9 125
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 grass. All was still save a little wind, 
 rising and falling in the withered leaves, 
 and the flutter of startled wings in the 
 vines above me. 
 
 There at arm's - length were the lilac 
 shrubs; beyond, the pear-tree with its 
 limb just low enough for a leaping boy. 
 Over the way the big house glowered, 
 even in moonlight, in its great square.
 
 XVI 
 
 AMIE was a red-cheeked school- 
 boy when our Princess came 
 through those great iron gates, 
 a bride. It was a gala week in 
 the green square. Those hun- 
 dred windows blazed at night. 
 Carriages rolled up the gravelled drive- 
 way and out again. Carts lingered at the 
 tradesmen's entrance, stuffed with baskets ; 
 workmen slipped through the alley gate- 
 way in the morning and out at night again 
 with their bags of tools. The morning pa- 
 pers were full of tales the bride was the 
 fairest of the city's daughters, the groom 
 the richest, handsomest of its younger sons. 
 Kate's eyes widened as the trousseau 
 rustled and trailed its frills through half 
 a column of the Herald's gossip. With 
 127
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 a girl's eagerness she peeped cautiously 
 from the windows in the vines. There 
 were jewels sparkling in the very air! 
 
 On my way from the office I stepped 
 into Toby's for a meditative mug of ale. 
 It was a dusky corner where I sat in the 
 old chop-house. A picture hung upon 
 the wall stage-coach, fox-hunt, or win- 
 ner of some Derby: I've forgotten which 
 fly - specked and stained by time. 
 Through a haze of cigar smoke I watched 
 the drinkers at the tables, the aproned 
 waiters flitting by like ghosts; listened to 
 the drone of voices, gusts of hoarse 
 laughter, splutter of chops grilling on 
 the fire, and the clashing of pewter cups. 
 
 The door burst open. A whiff of June 
 wind stirred the blue smoke into lazy 
 eddies and touched my brow with its 
 coolness, so that I turned my head. 
 
 A young stranger strode, laughing, into 
 
 the room six feet of stalwart manhood 
 
 crowned by a fine, well-chiselled head, 
 
 the face blooming with health and care- 
 
 128
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 less youth. There was a welcoming 
 voice "Chelsea!" 
 
 Like a flash I thought of those cheeks 
 like cream and rose-leaves, and wonderful 
 for kisses if one 
 
 This, then, was the man who dared! 
 
 A judge made room for him; a white- 
 bearded colonel offered a vise-like hand; 
 a banker nodded that whole round table 
 beamed upon him, and men at the other 
 tables turned their heads. Waiters hur- 
 ried to his side two took his stick, a 
 third his hat, as he bowed familiarly to 
 left and right, smiled, seated himself, 
 tossed off his ale, I told myself, as a young 
 viking his horn of mead, and straightway, 
 easily, like one confident and so forgetful 
 of his place and power, fell to chatting 
 with his older friends. 
 
 His voice rose clearly from his deep- 
 welled chest, his every pose, his every 
 gesture, his every glance, glowing with 
 life, were such I could not take my eyes 
 from him. I watched with a pang of 
 129
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 envy in my heart. The young gods were 
 not dead. 
 
 "Ay, look! Look long and well, poor 
 Jerry Down," said a still, small voice, 
 "for that, indeed, is young Captain Chel- 
 sea you hear of every day. A million if 
 he has a penny governor's aide looks 
 like the hero of an historical novel in his 
 blue uniform could be your mayor if he 
 would, they say the best horseman in 
 the state plays polo, golf muscles like 
 steel hunts big game in the Rockies, Ind- 
 ian jungles, African plains rowed, you re- 
 member (or did when you had red blood) 
 at Yale in that famous year known, is 
 Chelsea, in a dozen capitals speaks half 
 as many tongues loved, doubtless, by a 
 dozen girls as fair as your golden Princess 
 who has given him her hand ! Jerry Down 
 Jack Chelsea. Jack Chelsea Jerry 
 Down." 
 
 So rattled on that still, small voice, of 
 mine, mockingly. I stared the harder at 
 that young Adonis there 
 130
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "If Captain Chelsea," I told myself, 
 "had been born plain Jerry Down- 
 There was a roar of laughter. 
 
 "Capital!" said the colonel. 
 
 "Good! Good!" rumbled the judge. 
 
 The captain smiled, spoke rapidly to 
 the waiter hovering about his chair spoke 
 in French, so that the waiter, grinned and 
 scraped, tickled to hear his native tongue 
 again. 
 
 "If I had been born to millions and 
 opportunity and gifts of God," I mused. 
 
 The captain drank, lifting his cup, as 
 all men must who drink lifting it, ah! 
 but not as other men. 
 
 My heart sank, sank to the very bottom, 
 but rose rose! rose again, remember- 
 ing the hero I had meant to be. I felt 
 the warm blood mounting to my cheek ! 
 shook myself free smiled pushed back 
 my frayed cuffs straightened my bent 
 shoulders opened my cramped lungs to 
 a long, full, heartsome breath threw my 
 head higher in the air, and crossed my
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 spindle legs. Then, with what little grace 
 I fain could muster, I laid my hand to 
 my pewter mug, minded to quaff as jaunt- 
 ily as any Chelsea ever dared laid my 
 thin, trembling hand, I say, to my brim- 
 ming cup, and 
 
 Spilled the brown liquor on my very 
 knees ! 
 
 then listened humbly to that still, 
 small voice again.
 
 XVII 
 
 FTER the honeymoon Captain 
 Chelsea and his bride came back 
 to Chaffinch Street to dwell while 
 he built her a fairer palace in a 
 newer quarter of the town. We 
 saw them often, riding together 
 -the Princess, as we still called her, 
 pink-cheeked and beautiful in her simple 
 habit, the captain graceful as a cavalier. 
 Sometimes they cantered by me on golden 
 mornings as I walked down - town, so 
 near that I stopped on the crossing to 
 let them pass. Only a little fresh, sweet 
 air lay cool between us yet then, near 
 as she was to me, she seemed more dis- 
 tant than when a boy I watched her pass- 
 ing, a vision on a little seat I thought 
 a hassock, come like a fairy through
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 those great iron gates and like a fairy 
 gone. 
 
 Now as she rode away, blithe and with- 
 out a care but her own fairness, I would 
 think of a woman clearing a table of its 
 blue cups. We were still young, I told my- 
 self. What other men had done for their 
 loves I, in time, would do for mine yet, 
 even as I vowed it, wondered doubtfully if 
 life would be for me what I had planned. 
 Where was the first stone of that bigger 
 house I was to build for her ? Where even 
 was the first grass-blade of that new 
 green square? 
 
 "Face the truth, Jerry," I told myself. 
 "You are nothing but a common, every- 
 day sort of fellow, after all your dreaming. 
 Take your medicine. Smile, man smile !" 
 
 I did, but it must have been a pitiful 
 sort of thing. My neighbor Pidgeon saw 
 it, I remember, and was concerned. 
 
 "What is the matter, Down?" he asked, 
 clapping me upon the shoulder. "Any- 
 body dead?"
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "A a hero," I said. 
 
 "A what?" said he. 
 
 "A hero, I tell you. Look here, Pidg- 
 eon, don't be frivolous; and remember 
 this: if a man looks like a gravestone he 
 is pretty apt to be burying something, 
 even though it's only a little piece of his 
 own heart." 
 
 Pidgeon looked at me. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," he said. "I 
 really do." 
 
 "We have each other, Jerry," Kate 
 would tell me, "and we have Jamie." 
 Her eyes were bright for me, her voice 
 tender; but sometimes that very gentle- 
 ness made me more wistful than before. 
 
 "Poets need words for their love," I 
 said to her. "An ordinary man, some- 
 how, needs sticks and stones for his. 
 Katie, I would build you an epic three 
 stories high with a perfect sonnet of a 
 tower!" 
 
 135
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Then this old, little house must be a 
 love-song and sweet enough," was her 
 reply. She said it as a girl, as Barbara 
 would have said it, her eyes dancing. All 
 her life she has had that way of saying 
 things, things bright enough to put in a 
 story, but with only her husband to listen 
 and smile at them and forget. So, often, 
 in a quiet woman's eyes I see a twinkling 
 so eloquent I feel quite sure there must 
 be words to it as bright that she is saving 
 to say when she is home again. 
 
 The world was full of things I longed to 
 give her great, double roses, as it were, 
 my Barbara music -and holidays and 
 strange, new scenes and gowns to wear. 
 
 "Humpf!" I sniffed, as some proud 
 heiress swept from a shop to her waiting 
 carriage at the curb-stone. " If you, now, 
 were one-half so lovely as my Kate would 
 be in your fine flounces!" 
 
 " But it isn't gowns I need to be happy, 
 Jerry," she would tell me. 
 
 "I know, my dear, but you would be 
 136
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 just as happy if you did have them, would 
 you not?" 
 
 "I think," she said once, "I should be 
 happier wearing them for you than for 
 myself." 
 
 " Katie, Katie," I replied, " that's just 
 the worst of it!" 
 
 "The worst?" she said. 
 
 "The very worst. If only, somehow, 
 you could manage to be less deserving, 
 my dearest dear." 
 
 Over her sewing in the lamplight's 
 yellow glow I saw a woman's face still 
 young and fair. There were no wrinkles, 
 no crow's-feet yet. Her lips were red, 
 her cheeks still round, her eyes still ra- 
 diant, her step still blithe as ever in the 
 lane, it seemed to me yet now and then, 
 when her long day's work was done, I 
 thought I saw the Older Woman's face 
 coming in that younger one. 
 
 Then I would think jealously of that 
 broom lurking behind the door, of those 
 kettles hanging on the wall, and that 
 i37
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 shining china on the cupboard shelf. 
 Silly, kitchen things they had always 
 seemed to me, yet now I knew them for 
 what they were for, day by day, year 
 by year, and all so subtly I would scarcely 
 dream it, they would be stealing a wom- 
 an's bloom away. 
 
 Often I took the needle from her very 
 fingers, pressed their rough tips in mine 
 with an old tenderness 
 
 " Dear one, you've worked enough this 
 day." 
 
 "I ought" 
 
 " Yes, you ought to play awhile." 
 
 And it was wonderful how like a girl's 
 her face grew rosy on our holidays so 
 like that other woman's face I saw in pass- 
 ing on golden mornings that I would cry, 
 
 " Kate, you are lovelier than the Prin- 
 cess!" 
 
 Then it would come to me how like a 
 flower she would go on blooming defy- 
 ing, even as the Princess, Time himself 
 if only I could keep her always in the sun. 
 138
 
 XVIII 
 
 ND there was Jamie, that other 
 star-eyed one of lovers three 
 hardy, red -cheeked, perennial, 
 and coming up so fast, Kate 
 I said, .she could almost see him 
 growing. Soon he would need 
 a self - made man for father, if half his 
 dreams came true. 
 
 He was to go to college; but "first, 
 father" or so he told me, his face shin- 
 ing while I trimmed my cuffs, he was to 
 have a pony: a spotted, circus one with 
 long white mane and tail; and a saddle, 
 and a little whip, and a yellow tie like 
 Harry Pidgeon's, and a gun oh yes, a 
 gun ! Then he would go a-hunting in the 
 country where Aunt Phcebe lived. He 
 would leave in the morning and get to Pine- 
 139
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 ville after dusk; and Aunt Phoebe would 
 have a big, hot supper all waiting for him, 
 and be surprised how he had grown. Then 
 he would rise early, when the roosters 
 crowed, and eat pancakes in the kitchen, 
 and stuff sandwiches into the pockets of 
 his coat, and be gone. And the first morn- 
 ing he would shoot, he said, "three rab- 
 bits and a squirrel, father," then eat his 
 sandwiches on a log, and shoot a wood- 
 chuck that afternoon and be home by 
 six. 
 
 What human father could spoil a dream 
 like that? 
 
 Already pony-time was drawing nigh. 
 I thought surely to be ready for it, but it 
 came so suddenly, or so it seemed to me. 
 There had been no promise, it is true 
 only a sort of wistfulness on Jamie's part 
 and hopefulness on mine. No word was 
 broken, yet I could not help seeing the 
 Other Lover's face as it might have been. 
 
 "Ponies," he said, as if by accident, 
 "cost a good deal, father." 
 140
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Yes," I said. 
 
 "Especially to keep them," he con- 
 tinued. 
 
 "Funny," he said again, for I was 
 silent. " Funny, isn't it, that such little 
 horses should eat so much?" 
 
 "Oh, not so singular," I replied, "when 
 you think how boys, sometimes, eat twice 
 as much as men." 
 
 " I guess my legs are hollow," the Other 
 Lover said. 
 
 " Father," he went on, after another 
 silence, "do they ever have second-hand 
 ones?" 
 
 "Ones?" 
 
 "Ponies." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, they they wouldn't cost so 
 much now, would they?" 
 
 "Oh, sometimes more," I said. 
 
 " But a second - hand saddle, father, 
 wouldn't cost so much?" 
 
 "No," I replied, and glanced up at 
 him so curiously that his face flushed. 
 10 141
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "I was just a-asking," he assured me, 
 adding, " 'Cause now, of course you we 
 couldn't be any room for him here; but 
 in the country, if we lived there, father, 
 we might, mightn't we?" 
 
 "Ah, yes, in the country, son, I think 
 we might," I said. 
 
 " If only I could see my way to do it," 
 I told Kate afterward, but she shook her 
 head. 
 
 "We might scrimp a little closer, I 
 suppose," I said. 
 
 "There are so many things you need 
 yourself, Jerry," she replied, and began 
 to talk of a winter coat, though I had 
 one then I had worn four years. 
 
 "And good for another two," I as- 
 sured her. "The best investment I ever 
 made." 
 
 " Jerry," she cried, " I shall never, never 
 mend that worn-out thing again." 
 
 "It would be fine exercise," I con- 
 tinued. 
 
 "Mending!" she cried. 
 142
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Riding," I said. "It would develop 
 him." 
 
 "I know, Jerry, but " 
 
 "And teach him grace and courage," 
 I went on, warming to my theme. "It 
 would send the red blood tingling." 
 
 "It tingles now when he plays," she 
 told me . " You should see his red cheeks . ' ' 
 
 "I do," I said. 
 
 I did. I saw them then behind a toss- 
 ing mane. 
 
 "Besides," I heard, "it would cost so 
 much to keep one." 
 
 Kate came and put her head against my 
 cheek. 
 
 "We shall need so many little things," 
 she said. "Really, you must put it out 
 of your head, my dear." 
 
 I did. I put it there where so many 
 things were going, where all those shining 
 gowns of hers were hanging those I had 
 meant to buy for her long before pony- 
 time. I put it there in a kind of stall, 
 but without a halter so that if better 
 
 143
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 days should chance to come to me it 
 might more freely amble out again. 
 
 The wind had risen. A mist had floated 
 across the moon. I had a mind to seek 
 my chair again, but the lamps of a car- 
 riage shining a moment in the gateway 
 opposite caught my eyes and drew them 
 to that great house-shadow in the square. 
 
 Then as I gazed, with something of 
 pony-time still lingering in my thoughts, 
 it came to me how that self -same shadow 
 had lain always across my pathway: first 
 on my childhood, a faint reflection of a 
 thing to wonder at as I stood peering 
 through the fence ; then on my youth, lying 
 as lightly there as though of clouds to which 
 my dreams went soaring; then on my 
 manhood, phantom-like, reminding me of 
 how those dreams had vanished with the 
 years. 
 
 Yet now I smiled at it, a little sadly, 
 thinking of how it lengthened to my very 
 144
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 threshold, darkening love itself awhile 
 days when I toiled, and unremittingly as 
 the self-made men had said, yet was not 
 one of them hours when I gazed back 
 wistfully to the lane to find it greener 
 there than I had thought before. 
 
 Kate never spoke of those old lane 
 promises nor seemed ever to have even 
 heard them. Every evening when I came 
 from work her face shone for me as if I 
 were the hero I had meant to be and I 
 was hero to little Jamie. 
 
 I leaned my head against the casement. 
 
 " To think," I said, gazing at that great, 
 black symbol of the wealth I had not won, 
 I ever let you hide the sun from me!" 
 
 Yet it was only for a little while. 
 
 One day that great house stood there, 
 towering above my little one scarce higher 
 than the lilacs ; here in its shadow, lovers 
 three man, wife, and little playing boy 
 one day in pony-time ; the very next . . . 
 
 I rose quickly from the window-seat. 
 Pacing that room of books and memories, 
 
 145
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 it all came back to me how, swiftly, from 
 the very skies, that other darkness fell 
 without a warning, blotting forever that 
 puny shadow of a heap of stones. 
 
 Stones and mortar, oh, my Jamie ! For 
 as you lay there, white and still among the 
 flowers, your father, staring through the 
 windows in the vines, beheld that miracle : 
 stones and mortar where had been a palace 
 yesterday.
 
 XIX 
 
 HE wind had fallen. I stood 
 again, watching the stars in the 
 pear-trees and thinking of the 
 stillness. Strange! what a si- 
 lence a little child leaves be- 
 hind him, and all unbroken as 
 long as he is gone. 
 
 Look in the garden: you will see no 
 hyacinths their scent stifles me; you 
 will find red roses but no white ones there 
 and if there were Kate could not see 
 them long, for memories. 
 
 That day we we who had been so rich, 
 yet did not know till we were poor that 
 day we were dumb who had always known 
 so many words for love, who found grief 
 lonely though our cheeks were wet with 
 each other's tears that day there came
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 from the big house opposite a wreath of 
 lilies. We took them, wondering; but 
 on the morrow, a mocking morning when 
 all the world ran on without us, two lit- 
 tle white hearses passed out of Chaffinch 
 Street one from a wooden, one from a 
 great iron gate . . . 
 
 "Father!" 
 
 Was I dreaming? 
 
 "Father!" 
 
 I turned with out-stretched arms. Kate 
 and my two boys, Bert and Leslie, were 
 home again.
 
 PART II 
 
 IN THE SUN
 
 UNDAY: Kate left for Pineville 
 yesterday. 
 
 "Go," I had said, twenty 
 times if I said it once, "and 
 stay a month, my dear. You 
 are tired. It will do you good 
 to be rid of us awhile." 
 
 "Yes, go, Aunt Kate," said Barbara, 
 who is again a daughter to us. "I will 
 be mother to the boys." 
 
 Yet it took us fourteen days to make 
 up her mind for her, and she left at dusk, 
 still doubtful, in a flurry of farewells. The 
 telegram came this morning at breakfast- 
 time. 
 
 "Arrived safely," it ran. " Send if you 
 need me Kate." 
 
 "Just like the girl," I said. "'If we
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 need her!' As if we couldn't run the 
 house ourselves eh, Barbara?" 
 
 My niece, who was pouring the coffee 
 with a prim but unsteady hand, smiled 
 reassuringly. 
 
 "We'll show her," said I, "that the 
 authoress of Lady Bombazine's Secret ' 
 
 "Lady Bombazine!" cried my niece, in- 
 dignantly. ' ' Madelaine. ' ' 
 
 "Ah, yes Madelaine, my dear. I for- 
 got." 
 
 "Oh, dear," said Barbara, "and so did 
 I." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " You only take one sugar, Uncle 
 Jerry." 
 
 "I'll drink it, Barbara," said Bert. 
 
 ' ' Indeed , " I interposed , ' ' you' 11 do 
 nothing of the sort, young man. Coffee 
 at your age! Ridiculous! What would 
 your mother say?" 
 
 "She lets me have it doesn't she, Les- 
 lie?" 
 
 "Why, Bert!" said Barbara. 
 152
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 " She does, too ! Mother often gives me 
 coffee." 
 
 "O-oh!" drawled my niece. 
 
 " Often ?" I asked. " How often ?" 
 
 " Why, every once in a while, fa- 
 ther." 
 
 "Thanksgiving and Christmas," said 
 Barbara. 
 
 "And other days, too," cried my son, 
 hotly. "I guess I know, Miss Barbara 
 Burton. You needn't think you 
 
 "Boys!" I commanded. 
 
 "7 didn't thay anything, father," pro- 
 tested my littler son. 
 
 "Bert" I corrected myself. "Didn't 
 mother tell you to mind Barbara?" 
 
 " Yes, but she didn't say that I couldn't 
 have any " 
 
 " Silence !" I commanded. " What's that 
 you're mumbling, sir?" 
 
 "I was talking to Barbara." 
 
 "Then speak aloud. Barbara is right. 
 Yet I do remember that you had coffee 
 one Sunday not long ago. Still this is
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 no way to ask for it. I've a good mind 
 not to let you have it at all." 
 
 "Why, Uncle Jerry!" protested Bar- 
 bara. 
 
 "Don't give him a full cup," I said, 
 sternly. "He doesn't deserve it. Half 
 will do." 
 
 "But, Uncle" 
 
 "Put in three sugars, Barbara," said 
 my son. He had cooled and was again 
 most amiable, yet I could not dismiss the 
 matter without some final stress on my 
 reproof. 
 
 "The idea," I reminded him, "of a boy 
 your age quarrelling at table!" 
 
 "/ didn't quarrel, father, did I?" said 
 my other, my righteous little son. 
 
 "No, Leslie," I replied, warmly, "you 
 did not ; and just to reward you, Barbara 
 may put some coffee just a taste now 
 just enough to color it in your milk, my 
 boy." 
 
 Breakfast went more smoothly after 
 that. A little firmness in the nick of time,
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 as I tell Kate, is the secret of good disci- 
 pline. Children are managed easily enough 
 if one but knows the way. 
 
 Barbara, somehow, while I was reading 
 in the garden, got the two boys clean and 
 starched for Sunday-school, and tied their 
 ties for them. They went as usual by way 
 of my right vest-pocket, from which I doled 
 ten radiant pennies, hoarded religiously 
 is the very word through the week. I 
 watched them as they left the gate. Two 
 finer lads well, as I say, I saw them go, Bert 
 head and shoulders above the little chap. 
 
 At noon they had not returned! 
 
 "Maybe they are at the Pidgeons'," 
 said Barbara. 
 
 They were not next door. 
 
 " Perhaps they walked home with the 
 minister, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 I thought backward till I had got as 
 far as the time when an uncle-y goodman 
 was, say, a cousinly bad boy. 
 
 "No," I said, firmly, "they would not 
 have done that." 
 
 155
 
 THE FLOWER OP YOUTH 
 
 "They did once," my niece asserted. 
 
 "Are you sure, Barbara?" 
 
 "They said so." 
 
 "Hm," I replied. "Had they come 
 home late that Sunday?" 
 
 "Mm rather late." 
 
 "So I suspected. Still, we might try 
 the minister." 
 
 Now the Pidgeons have a telephone it 
 is a neighborly way they have but the 
 Rev. Dr. Lemon had seen neither hide nor 
 hair or, to speak precisely, really had 
 not " observed either of the dear children, 
 but let us hope they are safe from harm." 
 
 Barbara, much agitated, put on her hat. 
 She ran over to the church itself, a matter 
 of ten short blocks or so formerly but 
 nine, before the Butterfields put up barbed 
 wire. The edifice was empty. 
 
 "What shall we do, Uncle Jerry? It's 
 dinner-time." 
 
 She was out of breath. 
 
 "Do?" said I, gazing at her flushed 
 cheeks. "Dine," said I. 
 156
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 " But, Uncle Jerry, suppose 
 
 " Barbara," I replied, calmly, as we went 
 in together, "were you never a boy?" 
 
 " Uncle Jerry, I'm so anxious, and Aunt 
 Kate away." 
 
 "That," I replied, "is probably the 
 explanation." 
 
 "Oh, you think " 
 
 "Um-hm," said I. 
 
 "Think what, Uncle Jerry?" 
 
 "Why," I said, "it's simple enough. 
 These young rap sons of mine have taken 
 a long cut home." 
 
 "Oh, I hope so," she replied, fervently. 
 "Why, Uncle Jerry, if anything should 
 happen to them " 
 
 "Never fear," I replied. "Something 
 will happen to them, my dear." 
 
 "You won't hurt them, Uncle Jerry. 
 Please don't hurt them." 
 
 I took up the carver with a firm grasp. 
 
 "Barbara," said I, "this is no time for 
 weakness. They shall be treated as they 
 deserve."
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 For a moment she was silent. 
 
 "Still, they may have an excuse, you 
 know." 
 
 "Doubtless," I replied, "they will pre- 
 sent one. We shall listen to it." 
 
 "I mean, it may be a good one, Uncle 
 Jerry." 
 
 "Time," said I, "will tell." 
 
 We were silent again. 
 
 "They are usually such good boys, 
 Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "Usually," I replied. 
 
 "And they do try to do what's right 
 and are so affectionate." 
 
 "True," said I. 
 
 "And are kind to animals." 
 
 "Oh, very." 
 
 We ate quietly. 
 
 "I I shouldn't mind so much, Uncle 
 Jerry, if it weren't for that dreadful 
 creek." 
 
 "Creek!" 
 
 ' ' Yes ' ' shuddering ' ' where they're 
 always getting d-drowned." 
 158
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Good Lord!" said I, laying down my 
 knife. "You don't for a minute sup- 
 pose 
 
 "No," she replied. "They promised 
 Aunt Kate never to go near it unless you 
 were along. They would keep their word, 
 Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "They are usually such good boys," 
 I said. 
 
 "Oh yes," she assured me. 
 
 "And they do try to do what's right," 
 I went on. 
 
 "Oh yes, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "Yet, by George," said I, "I" 
 
 "Oh, I'm sure they wouldn't go near 
 it," said my niece. 
 
 "Still " I said. 
 
 " That's just it," she replied, but added, 
 hopefully, " Oh no, they wouldn't go near 
 it. Don't worry, Uncle Jerry. It's a 
 lovely place." 
 
 "But," said I, "it's a long way off." 
 
 "It is pretty far," she assented, "and 
 oh, it's so grassy there where they swim
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 grassy and sweet-smelling and butterflies 
 all around, and the clear water and all 
 you're not eating, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 " Oh yes, I am," I replied, more heartily. 
 
 "It makes you want to swim just to 
 look at it even if you're a girl," my 
 niece ran on. She was doing her cheerful 
 best. 
 
 "But the boys can't swim a stroke!" I 
 cried. 
 
 "No," she said. "That was the way 
 with the Jeffrey boy." 
 
 "You mean the one that " 
 
 "Yes; his foot caught in the weeds or 
 something but you're not half through, 
 Uncle Jerry. There's going to be pie." 
 
 "No, thanks," I said, rolling my nap- 
 kin. "I I think I'll just" 
 
 "There!" cried Barbara, so suddenly, 
 so sharply I fairly leaped from my seat. 
 "There they come, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "W- where?" I gasped but the next 
 moment heaved a great sigh of thankful- 
 ness, for they were alone and came on their 
 160
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 own little, spindling legs, those boys of 
 mine. Those two rapscallions came up 
 the very steps I used to climb came, 
 hand-in-hand, with mud-sweet faces, and 
 on their once-black Sunday shoes were 
 the stains of just such boggy pools as frogs 
 live in, and in their best black Sunday 
 suits I saw the claw-prints of those barbs 
 and brambles that lie in wait for you in 
 country lanes. 
 
 " Well, well, young men," I said, hoarse- 
 ly, clearing my throat. " Where have you 
 been?" 
 
 "Oh, father, we know a bully place to 
 get water-cress." 
 
 "Well," said I, still trembling with my 
 wrath. "Do you know what time it 
 is?" 
 
 " It was longer than we thought, father," 
 said my son, sweetly. "And, gee, father, 
 I 'most fell in." 
 
 "Fell in!" 
 
 "Didn't I, Leslie?" 
 
 "Yeth, he motht fell in." 
 161
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "The creek, do you mean?" 
 
 "Yes, we " 
 
 "Didn't your mother tell you not to 
 go near that 
 
 "We didn't, father. We just went in 
 the meadows, and the first we knew the 
 creek came right around to where we 
 were picking water-cress. Didn't it, Les- 
 lie?" 
 
 "Yeth," said Leslie, still holding his 
 brother's hand and burst into tears. It 
 is very hard to be tired and muddy. 
 
 "Well, I wouldn't cry about it," I 
 said. 
 
 "And an awful big snake came, father 
 big as a boy-constrictor. Didn't he, 
 Leslie?" 
 
 "Yeth a a awful" 
 
 Now a harmless garter-snake will raise 
 my hair, and the bare thought of those 
 two defenceless boys of mine with a snake 
 and a creek wriggling at their very heels 
 while they bent innocently in the meadow 
 grass for water-cress! 
 162
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Don't cry," I said. "You you 
 haven't had anything to eat, I suppose?" 
 
 "No, father." 
 
 They brightened visibly beneath their 
 meadow- tan. 
 
 "Well, well," said I, sternly, "you don't 
 expect just look . at yourselves! you 
 can't come to the table all mucky like 
 that, you know." 
 
 "Come," said Barbara, pouncing upon 
 them. 
 
 Then I remembered I was a father. 
 
 "Why, say," I cried, for she was spirit- 
 ing them up the staircase. "I say, you 
 two look here! What the devil do you 
 mean by 
 
 "O-oh, father!" gasped my son Leslie, 
 levelling a bandit finger over the banister. 
 "You thaid devil!" 
 
 Well?
 
 II 
 
 ONDAY: A letter came this 
 morning. The folks are well, 
 Kate says, and Helen has grown 
 almost as tall as Barbara. 
 
 "... write and tell me just 
 how you are getting on without 
 me, and if you need me do not hesitate to 
 send. When I ran away I forgot to tell 
 Barbara that the darned stockings are in 
 the upper left-hand drawer of the walnut 
 bureau the boys' blue-and-white-striped 
 waists are for Sunday, mind don't let 
 them wear them in the dirt and, Jerry 
 dear, do be careful that the boys don't tire 
 the Pidgeons, and don't let them get the 
 better of you (you know your weakness!). 
 Let them have good times, certainly, and 
 kiss them for their mother bless their 
 164
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 little hearts, how I wish I could see them, 
 and you, too, you " 
 
 And so on. Kate writes the confound- 
 edest filigree hand no periods to speak of, 
 either; capitals where she stops for breath. 
 Still, it doesn't much matter; the oftener 
 you read her letters the more you find 
 there, overlooked the sweetest grapes 
 hang hidden in the vines. 
 
 "P. S. I don't mean that I want you 
 to be stern with them, but just keep them 
 safely in bounds, you know. Tell them 
 mother says they must be good boys and 
 mind Barbara (and not pull the wool 
 over father's eyes!). Dearest, on second 
 thought, you need not tell them that. 
 You should hear brother George talk about 
 Pickwick!' 1 
 
 " Boys," said I, as I started down-town 
 this morning. " Remember now. Mother 
 says you must mind Barbara." 
 
 "Yes, father." 
 
 "And don't be running over to the 
 Pidgeons' all the time." 
 165
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "No, father." 
 
 They are good boys, both of them. I 
 left them playing Wild West a breezy, 
 virile sort of game, and looks more men- 
 acing than it is; for I noted carefully ere 
 I left the street that in breaking broncos 
 they fairly cleared Kate's flower-beds. 
 
 To-night, tired with being good, they 
 went to bed, and Barbara, weaiy with 
 much watchfulness, retired early to her 
 room, leaving me to my small brown fate 
 curve stemmed, well bottomed, and crack- 
 ed pleasantly with fire and time on the 
 thumb side of the brier bowl. 
 
 "Now," said I, lighting and settling 
 myself more deeply in my chair, "if Kate 
 were here 
 
 For it is wonderful how attached to his 
 wife a man becomes when she is eighty 
 miles away. Or, rather, I mean, it is 
 wonderful how a man attached to his 
 wife becomes now, I was not lonely. I 
 do not mean that exactly, for I rather, 
 it was like this: 
 
 166
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 There opposite was the little low rocker 
 she had always sat in to sew and listen to 
 my reading after the children had gone 
 to bed. Even if I read to myself, I knew 
 she was there and there is something in 
 that. 
 
 No, I was not what you call lonely. 
 She had only been gone two days. Let 
 me see: just forty -nine hours and thirty- 
 three minutes by my father's clock since 
 we waved good-bye to her thirty-owe 
 minutes, to be exact, for her train was 
 two minutes late. Now forty-nine hours 
 are a long space of time when you come 
 to think of it a married man lighting 
 your pipe and thirty-one minutes more 
 do not help matters. 
 
 "Oh, well," I said, and reopened Pick- 
 wick for the hundredth hour of delight. 
 After Jamie went away we fell, somehow, 
 to looking at the books my father left 
 me, old-fashioned things Dickens, Scott, 
 Shakespeare, and the like which had 
 stood there long neglected on our shelves. 
 167
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 We did not open them at once. We 
 thrummed their backs awhile and tried 
 more modern tales instead splendid 
 things and bound most sweetly, and some 
 with heroes in them like Jack Chelsea 
 champing their bits and neighing and 
 rearing valorously, so that we cried aloud 
 in our admiration and straightway mix- 
 ed and forgot them, almost every one. I 
 cannot account for it, I am sure. I am 
 not literary. They taught us one thing 
 though that there is no time like the 
 past. What days those were ! And how 
 men loved and fought and died and what 
 lovely clothes they wore! Barbara, Bar- 
 bara, but I knew myself for a poor, miser- 
 able, whipper-snapper of a fellow I did 
 not dream then of even being uncle-y 
 and I saw what humdrum lives we two 
 were leading, Kate and I. 
 
 "Kate," I said, "I should have been 
 my great - great - great - great - great - 
 great - grandfather. Then, at least, I 
 should have been a man." 
 168
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Then we tried Pickwick. A-ah! Win- 
 kle, Tupman, Snodgrass, Weller, Jingle, 
 Joe why, bless you, we could remember 
 them ! 
 
 "Perhaps," said I, "it's because the 
 book has such good eating, Katie. Don't 
 you smell the chops, though, and taste 
 the ale ? You fairly feel it run down their 
 throats because, I suppose, you have felt 
 it sliding down your own ; and, in a way, 
 Kate in a way, they were mostly ordi- 
 nary men." 
 
 After a page of them our own little beef- 
 steak tasted better; and when the fire in 
 one of those little inns blazed up in Mr. 
 Dickens's pages, by George, sir, our own lit- 
 tle fire seemed cosey-like, with Kate sew- 
 ing beside it, and laughing, and well-nigh 
 swallowing the pins. We came to know 
 each other better than before, so that we 
 used to say sometimes, laughingly, that 
 it was Mr. Pickwick who had introduced 
 us all over again. Fancy the dear old 
 gentleman, one hand beneath the tail of 
 169
 
 THE FLOWER OP YOUTH 
 
 his bottle-green coat and the other wav- 
 ing beneficently : 
 
 "Jerry Down, allow me to present you 
 to your charming little wife, sir. Jerry 
 Kate. Kate Jerry. God bless you 
 both!" 
 
 "Kate," said I, "that man could have 
 made a story out of you and me." 
 
 Now I am not sentimental that is 
 quite plain, I think so I don't mind con- 
 fessing here that there were moments 
 moments then when I even fancied that 
 I, too, could have drawn up a ledger ac- 
 count of that girl Kate, beginning, say, 
 with the pink wild roses in the lane. It 
 is odd, but moments do come like that 
 when even an ordinary man feels literary. 
 
 We looked more sharply at my father's 
 book-shelves after that. From Pickwick 
 to the rest of Dickens was but pleasant 
 stepping say from an autumn to the 
 buds of spring. We felt all the pride of 
 increased acquaintanceship mere char- 
 acters, it is true, but some of them far 
 170
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 more real to us than flesh-and-blood ones 
 of the world we knew. You cannot dis- 
 miss Mr. Samivel Weller with a word 
 and what of Joe? 
 
 Mornings in the car I often nodded to 
 some kindly face. 
 
 "A fine day, sir." 
 
 " It is, indeed." 
 
 "Soon be leaving off overcoats." 
 
 "Yes, I saw a robin this morning." 
 
 Now from the redbreast to Mr. Pick- 
 wick may seem a day's journey, but I 
 managed it pretty well, I fancy. 
 
 "A robin," I would observe, carelessly, 
 keeping my goal, however, steadily in 
 mind, "is a fine bird when you come to 
 think of it." 
 
 "A very fine bird, indeed," doubtless 
 would be the amiable reply; and if my 
 comrade's breakfast had gone well with 
 him, he might even add "and it is a 
 shame, sir, that they are ever shot." 
 
 In that event my eye would glitter. 
 
 "You take the words from my very 
 171
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 mouth. I wish, sir, from the bottom of 
 my heart, that every robin hunter might 
 be as poor a shot as our old friend Winkle 
 ha! when he shot at the rooks. It 
 makes me laugh every time I think of it. 
 Winkle, you remember but I beg your 
 pardon. Of course, you've read Pick- 
 wick?" 
 
 And in some such graceful way, as it 
 were, we would fall to Dickensing delight- 
 fully. Now, if one talks but long enough 
 on a congenial theme, one is apt, I note, 
 to find fitting words for the pith of the 
 matter some epigram or little joke, fa- 
 vorite quotation from one's self, perhaps, 
 to repeat if need be a hundred times. I 
 remember well that I fell to saying with 
 a little gesture that made it seem more by- 
 the-bye : 
 
 "Mr. Pickwick is a " 
 
 (For I never could say "was" in refer- 
 ence to that immortal gentleman.) 
 
 "Mr. Pickwick is a man, sir a natural 
 man, however extraordinary he may other- 
 172
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 wise appear. He eats, drinks, sleeps, 
 laughs, gets mad, gets drunk, sir like the 
 rest of us." 
 
 That observation, harmless, silly little 
 thing, never failed to win a smile or good- 
 humored nod for me never, I should say, 
 save once when my strange companion 
 shook a dubious head. He replied, flatly, 
 
 " I cannot agree with you." 
 
 I was chagrined, with my little climax 
 ruined hopelessly. 
 
 "And why not?" I asked, flushing, for I 
 hate argument ; and, after all, what harm 
 is there in letting a fellow have his way ? 
 
 "Well," said he, "I am not prepared 
 to admit that a man who gets drunk is a 
 natural man, sir." 
 
 "But," said I, "you know how it is 
 yourself. A man " 
 
 " I beg your pardon, but I do not know 
 how it is myself." 
 
 The fellow seemed irritated. 
 
 " Oh, well," said I, bridling in turn. 
 " Of course, if you put it that way, the 
 173
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 whole matter resolves itself into a ques- 
 tion" 
 
 "Precisely," said my companion. "A 
 question." 
 
 "A question," I repeated, firmly, "as 
 to what is a natural man; and the fact 
 that you don't appear to er know how 
 it is yourself, sir, might cause grave 
 doubt in some quarters as to your qualifi- 
 cations for being considered a a natural 
 man." 
 
 "Doubt in some quarters!" he snapped 
 back at me. "What quarters?" 
 
 ' ' Natural-man quarters . ' ' 
 
 "Haunts of vice," sniffed the enraged 
 gentleman. 
 
 "Strong words," said I. 
 
 "Strong waters, sir." 
 
 A man in front of us turned around. 
 Now I dislike notice in public places. 
 
 "We won't argue," said I. 
 
 "No," said my seat-mate "no, we 
 won't, my friend. This is my corner. I 
 bid you good-day." 
 
 174
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 The man who had looked at us turned 
 again. He grinned gleefully. 
 
 "Sort of ruffled the dominie, eh?" 
 
 "The devil!" said I. 
 
 "No, the dominie," said he. "Didn't 
 you know? That was the Rev. Dr. 
 Lemon of the Emmanuel 
 
 "Thunder!" said I. "He didn't look 
 it." 
 
 " Or act it, either," said the man in front. 
 " But you touched his soft spot. He's a 
 prohib " 
 
 " Well," said I, " I'm mightily sorry. I 
 thought I was talking to a " 
 
 "Natural man, eh?" 
 
 "At any rate," said I, "clergymen 
 should be uniformed." 
 
 To-night as I mused of that little epi- 
 sode, thumbing Pickwick for some well- 
 loved lines, it struck me as the oddest 
 point of all that a man should be led astray 
 by pride in his fatherhood of some such silly 
 little jest as mine had been, to champion 
 a thing he loathes. Why, I was never 
 175
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 drunk in my whole lifetime! yet there, 
 that day, was I, Jeremiah Down, as sober 
 a family man as ever breathed, brandish- 
 ing cudgels in defence of tippling! 
 
 I laughed softly at the memory, for in 
 turning the pages I had come suddenly 
 upon a favorite scene of mine. It was 
 Mr. Pickwick sleeping off the fumes of 
 hunt-punch in a wheelbarrow. Don't you 
 remember ?
 
 Ill 
 
 UESDAY : We are growing used 
 to it, this being alone, we four; 
 and while, to be sure, there is 
 still that sense of an absence, a 
 vacancy in the little low rocker 
 at the coffee-pot in the gar- 
 den up-stairs everywhere we are quite 
 cheerful. The boys are good, Barbara is 
 wonderful, and I I am too old now not to 
 do very well. What we lose in years, I find, 
 we gain in philosophy. Even those dear to 
 us, I was going to say, are not so neces- 
 sary. Mind, I do not say so ; I was only 
 about to say so a different matter. Days 
 I am busy down-town ; evenings I have my 
 young folks and my pipe and books. I 
 am I was about to say content. 
 
 To-night, for instance, I had flown so 
 177
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 far on the wings of an old, old tale, Pine- 
 ville was as near as Chaffinch Street for 
 aught I knew or cared. 
 
 "By George!" said I, softly, to myself, 
 "there was a man who could write." 
 
 "Who's that, Uncle Jerry?" 
 
 I had forgotten Barbara. 
 
 "Shakespeare," said I. 
 
 "Oh," she replied, "of course." 
 
 Now Kate once made that same re- 
 ply to me. Everybody says "of course" 
 about Shakespeare, yet for years that man 
 just squatted on my shelves, or stood on 
 one leg, then on t'other, elbowed this way 
 and jostled that on dusting days, and I 
 never so much as offered him my hand. 
 Yet there are some mighty pretty things 
 in Shakespeare if you leave out the notes. 
 No water, please, in mine ; I like the hon- 
 est liquor better, and care not if it burns 
 my tongue. You hear so much of him as 
 a school-boy (we met, I remember, over 
 Cassar's bier in the Fourth Reader), and 
 you grow to manhood with such a quak- 
 178
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 ing class-room memory of a yard of notes 
 for every foot of verse, that I, for one, 
 was a little prejudiced against the fellow. 
 But when I stumbled on him one winter's 
 night and led him to the lamp and held 
 him off and had a look at him 
 
 " By George!" said I to Kate, I remem- 
 ber, "there was a man who could write. 
 Jessica pretty name; nice name for a 
 little girl, eh, Kate? Shylock didn't get 
 his pound of flesh, the beggar. Portia 
 listen, Kate ! the whole class used to 
 say: 
 
 " ' The quality of mercy' " 
 Kate took the pins out of her mouth. 
 
 "' is not strain 'd. 
 It droppeth ' " 
 
 and I'm blest if the dear girl did not say 
 the whole speech through without a falter. 
 
 "Good," said I; "when did you learn 
 that, Kate?" 
 
 "In school," she told me. "Our class 
 179
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 gave the play once, and I was Portia. 
 They all said well " 
 
 "They all said what?" I asked, for 
 Kate sometimes needs urging. 
 
 "Said I was awfully good as Portia." 
 
 Her eyes had brightened at the recollec- 
 tion. There was a rosy flush in her pale 
 cheeks. I smoked silently. I was won- 
 dering how she had looked as Portia, and 
 I remember it seemed a little odd to me 
 that there had ever been a time when she 
 was not mine, when her eyes had sparkled 
 and her lips had moved with pretty words 
 and I not near to hear them. 
 
 "So you were Portia?" I said. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Who was let me see who was this 
 chap Ba-Bassanio, in the play?" 
 
 " Tommy Rogers. I haven't seen Tom- 
 my in years. He runs a dry-goods store 
 out West. He did very well as Bassa- 
 nio." 
 
 I did not at once say anything. I want- 
 ed to be sure. So I smoked quietly and 
 180
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 looked up certain little passages that I 
 seemed to remember, vaguely, in the 
 play. There was one in particular, and 
 when I found it I read aloud to Kate: 
 
 " ' A gentle scroll Fair lady, by your leave; 
 
 (Kissing her).'" 
 
 "Kate," said I, "did did Tommy 
 Rogers kiss you there in the play?" 
 
 "Mm not exactly," my wife replied, 
 threading her needle. 
 
 1 ' Not exactly !' ' I repeated. ' ' Just what 
 do you mean by 'not exactly,' Katie?" 
 
 "Well, he" 
 
 "Out with it," said I. 
 
 "He made believe, or something." 
 
 "Or something, Kate!" 
 
 " Do you think I let boys kiss me when 
 I was in school?" she asked, sharply. 
 
 "Well, then," I replied, "all I have to 
 add, Katie, is this : that if it is true, as you 
 seem to indicate, that Tommy Rogers did 
 not kiss you 
 
 181
 
 THE FLOWER OP YOUTH 
 
 "Don't you believe me?" she inquired, 
 pertly. 
 
 "If," I repeated, "Tommy Rogers did 
 not kiss you then and there as the play 
 warrants, Tommy Rogers was a little fool." 
 
 "Tommy Rogers wasn't a little fool!" 
 said my wife, warmly. " He was a nice " 
 
 "Oh," I cried, "he wasn't a little fool, 
 then!" 
 
 "Don't be silly, Jerry," my wife replied, 
 and in a manner which seemed to indicate 
 that affairs had gone quite far enough. I 
 did not press her. Sometimes I think he 
 didn't. Sometimes well, I'm glad I 
 don't know Tommy. 
 
 "There's this to be said for Shake- 
 speare," I said to Barbara to-night. "He 
 wrote as nicely about spring and crocuses 
 and little young brooks and things as he 
 did about lords and battles, and even his 
 kings get gloomy, Barbara, like you and 
 me. Doesn't it strike you as a little 
 strange," I asked, "that we should feel 
 sorry for a king?" 
 
 182
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 She actually blinked, that romantic 
 maid. 
 
 "I had never thought of it that way, 
 Uncle Jerry," she confessed. 
 
 "So I supposed," I responded, airily. 
 "There was nothing uppish about Shake- 
 speare. Why, I suppose if he lived next 
 door, Barbara, and just dropped in of a 
 morning for a dozen buckwheats, he'd 
 like as not fill up his pipe from my tobac- 
 co-jar and go home and write as pretty a 
 quotation about those cakes as you'd ever 
 see." 
 
 "Uncle Jerry!" 
 
 "He certainly could write quotations, 
 my dear. I suppose he wrote more of 
 them than any man who ever lived. You 
 may find more in the Bible but several 
 fellows had a hand in that." 
 
 "Uncle Jerry!" cried my niece, now 
 horrified. 
 
 I strolled, smoking, to the shelves and 
 laid my fingers fondly against those faded 
 backs. 
 
 183
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Blest if I don't try Milton next," I 
 said. 
 
 (In a corner of the highest shelf, far 
 too high for prying youth, I spied a book 
 a tiny, green-bound innocent, it seem- 
 ed and smiled gently to myself. Of all 
 the bold-faced why, if a fellow wrote 
 like that to-day, by George, sir, they 
 would tar and feather him. It isn't what 
 he says so much as what he al-most says. 
 Wonderful, though, how he could make the 
 least thing interesting. There is a place 
 where he meets an ass jackass in a nar- 
 row way. He can't get by, nor can the 
 ass, and he tells what he thinks, and what 
 the ass thinks it's as good as a play. But 
 the best of all is dear old Uncle Toby!) 
 
 "Barbara," said I, lowering my eyes, 
 "have you ever read how do you say it? 
 Vicker or Vyker ? I always said Vyker 
 before I knew, and it's hard to change. 
 The Vicar of Wake field ever read that?" 
 
 My niece declared it a silly old thing. 
 
 "A-ah, Burns!" said I, touching him 
 184
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 lovingly. "There's the poet of them all, 
 my Barbara! If you ever get low in the 
 spirits and think yourself mighty poor, 
 common mud of a man, take my advice 
 read Burns. He'll send you whistling 
 to the office, darlin'." 
 
 "Uncle Jerry, what are you saying?" 
 my niece interposed. 
 
 "I forgot you were reading," I replied, 
 "but all these books, my dear, your aunt 
 and I have read together, and if anything 
 ever happens to her or me, the one who 
 is left has only to read them again to 
 bring back happy times here in this little 
 room. After Jamie went away I was 
 down in the mouth, and I didn't think 
 much of myself, but when I found some 
 of these fine old fellows here saying the 
 very things I'd been preaching yes, all 
 my life the things I had said at the 
 office, the things I had said to Kate, and to 
 neighbor Pidgeon over the fence only, 
 of course, they said them much better 
 than I ever could why, just to learn that 
 185
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 so many great men, you see er as it 
 were, agreed with me Barbara, it perked 
 me up a bit. 'Jerry,' said I, 'you're not 
 such a fool as some might think. Without 
 ever reading those chaps at all, you fell 
 to thinking things out for yourself, and 
 the only difference, on the whole, between 
 you and Shakespeare, say was "' 
 
 "Uncle Jerry!" my niece protested. 
 "There you go again. You start out 
 serious, but I never know when you leave 
 off." 
 
 "Girlie," said I, "did I ever tell you 
 about the poem I wrote in school? or, 
 rather, I began it. It was- never com- 
 pleted." 
 
 " Can you say it, Uncle Jerry?" 
 
 " I remember the first words: 
 
 " ' O Greece, thy' 
 
 That is as far as I ever got. I don't re- 
 call now whether the trouble was with 
 Greece or me, but, somehow or other, I 
 186
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 never finished it. Still, when you come 
 to think of it, it had about as pretty a 
 beginning as any of Tennyson's. I tell 
 you, Barbara, I've got some splendid 
 ideas if I could only get them down." 
 
 "That's just the trouble with me," my 
 niece replied. "I've thought out lovely 
 things for Lady Madelaine, but somehow 
 I can't write them. Professor Jenkins 
 says in class that it isn't what you say 
 that counts so much in writing, it's how 
 you say it." 
 
 "Exactly," I replied. "That's the great 
 difference between Shakespeare and me." 
 
 "Oh, Uncle Jerry!" 
 
 "At least," I added, "it's one of the 
 differences. You see, while an ordinary 
 chap like me may know a thing, it takes 
 a Shakespeare kind of fellow to " 
 
 " To say it beautifully," my niece put in. 
 
 "True," said I. "And another thing, 
 Barbara a-n-n-nother thing," I stam- 
 mered, for I was afraid the matter would 
 give me the slip before I could out with 
 187
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 it, "is this, my dear: you n-never know 
 what you do know till you see it all 
 written down for you by somebody 
 else." 
 
 "I see," she assented. 
 
 "And so," I cried, rushing on pell-mell 
 for it's wonderful how the ideas come to 
 you, one on the other's heels, while you're 
 talking "so," said I, "we should read the 
 great authors to get acquainted with our- 
 selves." 
 
 "You talk like Professor Jenkins," said 
 my niece, thoughtfully. 
 
 "Professor Jenkins," I replied, heartily, 
 eying her over my glasses dear, serious 
 little thing! " Professor Jenkins is a very 
 sensible man, my dear." 
 
 She shook her head at me. 
 
 "Uncle Jerry, I don't know what's to 
 become of you. You've been full of the 
 Old Nick ever since morning." 
 
 She may have been right about it. It 
 is called the Old Nick, I know, in a man 
 of my age ; but years ago when I cut such 
 188
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 capers they called them by a sweeter 
 name. 
 
 Have you never set out on a fresh, sweet 
 morning, with the air cool and the sun 
 warm and your soul swelling like an apple 
 bud, and then as your steps quickened 
 hummed to yourself snatches of nothing 
 you ever heard tunes made up of the mo- 
 ment's melody and have you never then 
 chanted to them foolish words? 
 
 To-day we had such a morning, a spring 
 pattern birds and leaves on a back- 
 ground of blue and gold and as I walked 
 to the office I own I sang a hodge-podge 
 to the May. 
 
 "Love, thou art thou art my soul is 
 bending unto thee-e-e-e oh, gentle one, 
 the wind is blowing come to my heart, 
 my heart, my ha -ha -heart, my Rosa- 
 line . . ." 
 
 Now who was Rosaline ? I never knew 
 girl named Rosaline. She was the morn- 
 ing the white clouds scudding overhead 
 -the sparrows twittering the yellow 
 13 189
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 dandelions in the grass-plots the breeze 
 the sun ! And so I carolled to her under 
 the wind, till suddenly it paused the 
 note was high my voice cracked pain- 
 fully two passing play-boys grinned at 
 me. My song was over. 
 
 That something then, that thing which 
 opened my eyes and urged me townward 
 at a faster pace, which swelled in my bo- 
 som and burst into silly ditties to the 
 spring-time, came oftener when I was a 
 lad. It made me run then, shout, leap, 
 fight with shadows till my face reddened 
 like the rose. Now? it makes a fool of 
 me. Rosaline ! 
 
 It is a morning madness that comes and 
 vanishes like the dew. Sometimes for days, 
 for weeks, it does not come at all. Then 
 my brow is furrowed, my eyes a-squint 
 with petty cares. But it returns some 
 morning when I least expect it. Waiting 
 for muffins, I laugh with Kate. I chal- 
 lenge Bert. I toss little, gurgling Leslie 
 above my head. Youth no, it is the Old 
 190
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Nick now, they call it; once they called 
 it by the sweeter name. 
 
 It came, as I say, this very morning, 
 with a foolish song. 
 
 "Jerry," said I, "you grow poetical. 
 You are a little lame, no doubt, but, man, 
 you have the spirit of the thing. You 
 have the frenzy. If only you could keep 
 it glowing all day long all through the 
 weeks, the years you, too, might be a 
 Tennyson!" 
 
 I was proud of that little thought, proud 
 of what I might have been if! I mused 
 more kindly of my Rosaline, who might 
 who knows? have been immortal in a 
 lyric if! 
 
 The nonsense pleased me, and, though I 
 laughed at it, straightway began to look 
 with a new reverence upon the men who 
 preserved their youth for us poets a 
 lot of boys, they are, grown tall and 
 musical, playing and piping along the 
 road-side in the sun, dreaming in attics 
 on rainy days. 
 
 191
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 And so to-night, as I sat with Barbara 
 reading, I found new beauty in familiar 
 lines. I said to myself: 
 
 " On a beautiful morning he thought of 
 that. I wonder was he sitting somewhere 
 on a stile." 
 
 And then again: 
 
 "This one smacks of a garden walk 
 under stars and pear-trees. That one 
 came to him looking down into a child's 
 bright eyes." 
 
 Reading and musing thus, I, Jerry 
 Down, little one-horse, incoherent poet 
 of a morning hour, author of Rosaline 
 reading, I say, and musing of a mighty 
 poet of a lifetime, singer of a hundred 
 lovely songs, I felt the breath of some 
 half-forgotten spring-time blowing upon 
 me. 
 
 "And so," I vowed, "I'll go on reading 
 to the end not to be wise not, God 
 knows, to be literary but to be young 
 again."
 
 IV 
 
 EDNESDAY: "Is it good?" I 
 asked them, for my mouth wa- 
 tered. 
 
 "Urn," was all I could make 
 them say. They were licking 
 the frosting -pan. Barbara, it 
 seems, had baked a cake, cocoa-nut, an old 
 favorite of mine, and while she was for- 
 ever stealing to the pantry door to have 
 another look to be quite sure, I suppose, 
 that it still cooled upon the sill, or that 
 its white layers would bear up patiently 
 till time for tea Bert and Leslie scraped 
 manfully, with two mighty spoons, on the 
 kitchen steps. 
 
 "Oh, Uncle Jerry, I hope it's good." 
 "Never fear," said I, "you'll see; there 
 won't be a smidgen of it left."
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH, 
 
 "But it's only the third that I ever 
 made," she said, so tremulously that I 
 patted her cheek and repressed a smile. 
 Mark I repressed it! Cakes, baking or 
 eating, are no laughing matter, take an 
 old hand's word for it. He is a wise man 
 who knows when to smile at one. 
 
 I learned my lesson long ago when Kate 
 first came to Chaffinch Street. She was 
 always such a girl then, blithe and eager 
 and fond of little things. It was half the 
 cake to see her pride in it but when it 
 fell! when things went wrong somehow 
 with its soft little middle, for which, it 
 seems, no remedy is known it was well 
 then to be soft with its softness, and with 
 Kate. I was long discovering (for I am 
 a man) that in the matter of home-made 
 cakes their worth lies less in their sweet- 
 and-lightness than in the hands that baked 
 them. 
 
 "I did it myself, Jerry!" 
 
 Dear child! Many's the time I quench- 
 ed that shining in her eyes. It seemed 
 194
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 more needful to be honest, to be witty, 
 than to be kind. Heavens! Suppose I 
 had been too tender! No, I must play 
 the man and hide myself behind a jest. 
 So was I long discovering that to a woman 
 belated praise is as none at all. 
 
 Yet even man, when you come to think 
 of it, is a bit touchy when his dish fails. 
 In our town once there was a man I knew 
 who ran for city clerk a cake political 
 which promised well outside. But when 
 they cut it on election night, lo ! it was all 
 doughy within. We did not smile at him. 
 We said but little, and said it kindly, with- 
 out a touch of wit. He had sowed cigars 
 and reaped a smoke which dulled his eyes 
 for a twelvemonth. He had followed the 
 recipe but the fire, I believe 'twas said, 
 had not burned well. 
 
 It is wise, then, to like fallen cakes, and 
 I always do, literally, for they sometimes 
 candify. To love things not for them- 
 selves, but for those who make them and 
 give them lovingly to love each other in 
 195
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 spite of frailties is, some men think, 
 quite happiness enough. 
 
 "Is it good?" I asked "the pan, I 
 mean," for the frosting seemed quite 
 gone, yet they still scraped hopefully. 
 
 " Urn," they said. 
 
 "It will spoil your appetites," I sug- 
 gested. They only grinned at me. 
 
 " Better try a little water now," I said. 
 They smacked their lips. 
 
 " It would spoil the taste," they averred. 
 
 "It's so sweet," I objected. 
 
 "That's why we like it," they replied. 
 
 "Can you taste it yet?" I asked. 
 
 "Urn fine!" 
 
 They reviewed the pan. 
 
 "There's a piece you didn't get," said 
 I. It was scarcely to be measured, but 
 they divided it. I gazed silently. Then 
 the thought of all that whiteness gone, 
 of all that sweetness never to be licked 
 again in pans now rusting Heaven knows 
 where it was too much for me; and 
 when they licked their spoons, critical- 
 196
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 ly, this side and that and down the 
 handle ! 
 
 " That's nothing," I cried. " You ought 
 to have seen the pans I used to lick ! Um 
 chocolate!" 
 
 They went on licking their spoons. 
 
 "Cocoa-nut's better," they declared. 
 
 "Better than chocolate!" I retorted. 
 
 "Um. It's sweeter," they replied. 
 They were so calm about it, so devilishly 
 contented that I 
 
 "What's the use arguing?" I told my- 
 self. Turning my back upon them, I 
 sought my pipe. "Come, come," said I, 
 "be a man, Jerry Down. Be a man." 
 
 Now the cake proved good. Barbara 
 beamed upon the whole tea-table. I 
 thanked her publicly in a set speech, in 
 behalf of myself and boys, and to-night I 
 wrote it all down to Kate pan, spoons, 
 and all. 
 
 "Six pages of cocoa-nut," I told my- 
 self, as I numbered the seventh and still 
 wrote on. 
 
 197
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "You ask," I wrote, "what your birds 
 and flowers are doing. Bert saw an oriole 
 this morning. Leslie has hunted for it all 
 day long. ' I never thee anything but old 
 robinth an' thparrows,' he complained to 
 me. 
 
 "The birds had an orchard brawl to- 
 night in the pear-trees such bickering, 
 bullying, billingsgate you never heard 
 flights and counter-flights, highway-birds 
 skulking in leafy lanes, swift sorties from 
 scented thickets, pecks, cries, sounds as of 
 feathery cudgellings ! It was a quarter to 
 eight and a cold, damp spring twilight be- 
 fore they stopped. 
 
 "Chirp! chirp! chirp! . . . Chirp! . . . 
 Chirp! chirp! 
 
 "Silence. 
 
 "Chirp! 
 
 "'The last word,' said I, 'like an old 
 woman.' 
 
 "Chirp! 
 
 "Silence again, save for a church-bell. 
 
 "Chirp! 
 
 198
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Silence silence. The last rioter was 
 in bed. 
 
 "As to the flowers, Barbara shall tell 
 you of the wistaria blooms, pale blue and 
 pendulous on the porch corner. The red 
 blossoms of the Japanese quince and the 
 yellow ones of the flowering currant 
 shrubs are dropping, but the lilacs are 
 white and lilac and fragrant in full flower. 
 There's bridal wreath and almond flowers 
 and bleeding hearts (including mine), but 
 the lilacs um! you can smell them from 
 the street. All the Pidgeon boys except 
 Margaret, who has the toothache from 
 eating so many caramels, were here to- 
 night, finding out who loves butter with 
 our last dandelions. 
 
 "I said I would leave all this for Bar- 
 bara -to write, but it is the only news I 
 can think of, for I have been pottering 
 around in the brown garden ever since I 
 came home, and nothing has happened 
 but birds singing and children playing and 
 flowers smelling sweet. We are getting 
 199
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 on don't worry. The boys are as good 
 as gold " 
 
 I had written those very words when the 
 door-bell rang. It was only Mrs. Pidgeon, 
 but as I ushered her in I thought there was 
 a certain little air of stiffness I had never 
 observed before. I offered her my pome- 
 granate chair. 
 
 "Thank you," she said. 
 "What ails the woman?" I asked my- 
 self. She had an unwonted color, and 
 the chair arms at least the lame one, 
 trembled, I thought, in her nervous 
 grasp. 
 
 "I called," she began, but paused a lit- 
 tle, breathlessly, so that I lost my head and 
 blurted out, 
 
 "Oh, I heard from Kate to-day." 
 " Indeed ! I hope she is well." 
 " Very. She is going to stay a month." 
 " I I cannot say I am glad," my neigh- 
 bor replied, frankly. 
 
 "Nor I," I as heartily rejoined, laugh- 
 ing. We were on better ground. "It is 
 200
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 very good of you," said I, politely, "to 
 miss her too." 
 
 "I do miss her," she replied, with even 
 more emphasis, I thought, than the matter 
 warranted. 
 
 "The house," said I, "does seem " 
 
 "In fact," said my visitor, who did not 
 appear to hear my voice, "your boys " 
 
 She paused dramatically, and went on: 
 "Your boys miss her, Mr. Down." 
 
 "Ah, yes," said I, "the dear little fel- 
 lows" 
 
 "There is every evidence, Mr. Down, 
 that they are without a mother." 
 
 "Oh yes," I assented. "True they 
 are without a mother." There was an 
 awkward silence then, sufficient time to 
 reach for my pipe and lay it down again 
 and cross my legs. 
 
 " Still," I said, " Barbara does very well 
 for one so young." 
 
 There was no assent. Now I have never 
 known Mrs. Pidgeon very well. In fact, 
 I have always been something of a coward 
 201
 
 before that famous tongue, but I like her 
 boys Margaret especially. Pidgeon, too, 
 is a pleasant, quiet little man. 
 
 "Mr. Down," said my caller, trying ap- 
 parently to say it calmly, "you may won- 
 der you may think it strange that I 
 should call in this way." 
 
 "Why should I?" I interposed. 
 
 " I do not wish to interfere," she con- 
 tinued. 
 
 "I'm sure you would not," I replied, 
 smiling, but scenting evil in the air. 
 
 "And I would not come to you," she 
 went on, candidly, "were your wife at 
 home. It is my duty, I think, however, 
 in her absence, to inform you painful 
 though that duty may be, and is, Mr. 
 Down that your two boys " 
 
 "Why," I exclaimed, "what" 
 
 "Mr. Down, they have been teaching 
 my boys to swear!" 
 
 "Impossible, Mrs. Pidgeon!" 
 
 "Quite possible, Mr. Down. I heard 
 them myself. Yes, by the back fence. 
 202
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Your little Leslie said to be quite. frank 
 with you, for we are both parents said, 
 'The devil!'" 
 
 "The devil!" said I. 
 
 " Yes. And then your Bert said what 
 we've said was said I need not repeat it." 
 
 "No," said I. "Proceed, Mrs. Pidg- 
 eon." 
 
 "And then my John said it, and then 
 my Thomas said it, and my little Philip 
 said it!" 
 
 "Well, well," I murmured, taking a 
 turn into the bay to get my wits about 
 me. 
 
 "And that is not all, Mr. Down." 
 
 "What then?" I gasped. 
 
 " When I went out to them, when I had 
 told them what naughty, vulgar, low-down 
 language I had overheard words, I said, 
 that no gentleman would dream of using 
 your little Leslie spoke right up and 
 said" 
 
 "Oh," I protested, "are you positive, 
 Mrs. Pidgeon, that you " 
 203
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Positive? Did I not tell you that I 
 heard them myself?" 
 
 "Yes," said I, "but" 
 
 "I feared you would doubt me," she 
 replied, in a tone of cutting sweetness. 
 "You are 'always taking the children's 
 part." 
 
 "Oh," said I- 
 
 "I am sorry," she went on, "that you 
 should think for a moment that I could " 
 
 "You quite misunderstand me," I pro- 
 tested. 
 
 "You have known me for a good many 
 years, Mr. Down. We have been neigh- 
 bors, and I do not think you can say, 
 truthfully, that in any previous instance 
 I have ever " 
 
 " Oh no, no, no!" I exclaimed. "Why, 
 Mrs. Pidgeon, I trust you implicitly im- 
 plicitly!" 
 
 " Then why do you " 
 
 "Oh, I don't. I don't, Mrs. Pidgeon. 
 It merely struck me in fact, don't you 
 see, I was so surprised, so astounded to 
 204
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 think that your children who as I have 
 said, not once, but many times to Kate, 
 are always such little gentlemen to think 
 that your children should have permitted 
 my children to use such as you say vul- 
 gar language." 
 
 " I am glad, Mr. Down, to hear you say 
 that. Glad, I mean, to hear you call such 
 language vulgar, because when I spoke to 
 the boys, using that very adjective, your 
 little Leslie" 
 
 "They were by the fence, I think you 
 said, Mrs. Pidgeon?" 
 
 " Right by the back fence." 
 
 "By the currant bushes?" 
 
 "Yes. Well, no hardly just by the 
 just about where you have your holly- 
 hocks." 
 
 " I see," I mused" by the hollyhocks." 
 
 "Yes. And as I started to tell you, 
 Mr. Down, your little 
 
 " Pardon me, Mrs. Pidgeon," I broke in, 
 "but before I forget it and I shall forget 
 it if I do not speak at once let me say to 
 ' 205
 
 you that I do not want you to misunder- 
 stand me. I am not attempting to de- 
 fend my boys in using such in this or in 
 any other misdemeanor. They are usually 
 good boys, I think I have never, for ex- 
 ample, known either of them to tell a lie." 
 
 "A-ah!" said my neighbor, "that's just 
 the point I was getting at, though I should 
 be sorry, indeed, to disappoint you in your 
 little Leslie. I have known and respected 
 you for a long time, Mr. Down, and some- 
 how I couldn't believe he was speaking 
 truthfully when he said 
 
 " Mrs. Pidgeon," I said, gravely, and with 
 some vehemence for one of my easy tem- 
 perament, though as courteously as I 
 could, "spare me these tales, I pray. It 
 is a peculiarity of mine that I never could 
 bear to have any one, even Kate, come 
 to me telling stories about my children 
 unless I was needed to assist in preserving 
 discipline. I take it that I am needed 
 now. Let us come to the point then. 
 What would you have me do?" 
 206
 
 THE FLOWER OP YOUTH 
 
 "Merely this: while there is nothing so 
 very terrible, Mr. Down, in what they 
 said" 
 
 "No, nothing criminal," I assented, 
 heartily. 
 
 "Still," she continued, "it is important 
 that any such tendency should be nipped 
 in the bud." 
 
 "Right," said I. 
 
 "And surely," she said, "you cannot 
 expect me to punish my boys for what your 
 boys" 
 
 "Certainly not, Mrs. Pidgeon." 
 
 "Yet some one," she added, "should be 
 held responsible." 
 
 "True," I agreed. "Mrs. Pidgeon, if 
 you will leave this matter entirely in my 
 hands, I think I can promise you that the 
 guilty party shall not escape. Will that 
 be satisfactory?" 
 
 "Y-yes," she replied, rising. "I think 
 so, though there was one point some- 
 thing, I've forgotten what I had partic- 
 ularly intended to 
 
 207
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Be assured, Mrs. Pidgeon," I said, 
 heartily, as we moved doorwards, "I 
 know just how you feel. I know your 
 pride in your children, of whom any par- 
 ent might well be proud." 
 
 " Really, Mr. Down, you are gopd to say 
 so." 
 
 "And how is Margaret?" I asked. 
 
 "Much better." 
 
 " I'm glad of that. What a glorious 
 night. By-the-way, let me get you some 
 pansies." 
 
 Inside alone again I took up my pen. 
 
 " The boys are as good as gold," I read, 
 and added, firmly: 
 
 " All is peaceful here. With love, Jerry."
 
 HURSDAY: "I thought Mrs. 
 Pidgeon's glance suspicious as I 
 nodded good-morrow to her on 
 my way down-town because, I 
 suppose, she has not yet heard 
 any sound of crying. Nor will 
 she, though she listen till her ears are 
 dumb. That devil matter has been settled 
 painlessly. 
 
 The court assembled in the library. 
 There were Barbara, the two boys, and the 
 guilty man, who was observed to shuffle 
 in his seat uneasily and shift his eyes from 
 the murky world within to that shining 
 one without the er grated windows. 
 What his thoughts were as he saw the 
 bright sun gleaming in the soft spring 
 foliage, what memories may then have 
 209
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 come to him of those innocent young child- 
 ish days now gone forever, when he played 
 as a bright-eyed child by his mother's 
 side, what blasted hopes may have torn 
 that bosom heaving now under a weight 
 of sin alas ! who can tell ? Ah, well ! ! ! 
 
 "Bert," said the guilty man "Leslie." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Mrs. Pidgeon was here last night. She 
 says that you boys have been teaching her 
 boys to say 'the devil.' Is that er 
 true?" 
 
 They hung their heads. 
 
 "Yes, sir." "Yeth, thir." 
 
 They brightened again. 
 
 " But, father, you" 
 
 " Exactly, my sons. You heard me say 
 it. I said it in a thoughtless moment, 
 and I regret it very much. Oh, it isn't 
 a crime to say it, and some folks think it 
 smart but I don't. It isn't a good word ; 
 it's vulgar; and though a man even a 
 gentleman may say it sometimes, fool- 
 ishly, when he forgets himself, why, when 
 210
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 he hears his boys say it his little, young, 
 manly sons, growing up hang it all, it 
 makes him ashamed of himself. You 
 know how it is yourselves: a fellow's likely 
 to say things, now and then, that he's 
 deuced sorry for afterwards, but, I tell 
 you, it cuts him all up when he thinks he's 
 gone and tempted er other nice young 
 fellows, you know, to say the same silly 
 thing. Now, just between us three and 
 Barbara, who er represents your mother 
 in this matter as man to man, I thought 
 I'd speak right out about it and er ask 
 you not to use that expression if you 
 don't mind. I don't blame you at all, you 
 understand. I blame myself. But I 
 er wanted you to know how I feel about 
 it, and er what do you say to ten cents 
 worth of gum-drops? Do you feel equal 
 to it?" 
 
 They did. Yes, sir, they did. And 
 there were no tears, no whackings, and at 
 the same time the devil, I have every rea- 
 son to believe, was checked in his nefari- 
 211
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 ous mission-work in Chaffinch Street. And 
 the Pidgeon boys will be surprised if they 
 try that swearing game on my two primed 
 and ready little sons. Oh, I know them ! 
 I can hear Bert now for in the role of 
 Jerry Down my son is a chip of the old 
 back-log. I may not be a hero to the 
 world, but to my boys ah! without ego- 
 tism, I may say it frankly : I am a hero of 
 the deepest dye. 
 
 I was a boy once myself. I know the 
 feeling. Sometimes I can stand away 
 and see myself as if I were my own father, 
 and then I find I am apt to choose the 
 softer word. I have said I am a hero to 
 my sons yes, but a hero who is not a 
 hero, or only a friendly sort of hero, after 
 all. 
 
 Now and then I take them into my con- 
 fidence, give them Bert particularly, for 
 he is nearer to my age give him some bit 
 of counsel, pearl of great price for which 
 I paid dearly enough, Heaven knows, in 
 my time. What does he say? To me: 
 212
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Yes, father." 
 
 To himself: 
 
 "That's all well enough for father, but 
 he doesn't understand me. I'm different, 
 I am." 
 
 For Bert, remember, is a sunburned 
 school-boy whose heart beats faster than 
 his head. He will not settle down into 
 this humdrum life of father bless you, 
 what addle-patedness ! He'll never just 
 live on from day to day supporting his 
 family what a narrow, hand-to-mouth, 
 slave-till-night, sleep-till-morning sort of 
 business, to be sure! No, Bert is to be a 
 senator or a general or something. How, 
 then, can my advice be of value to such a 
 man? 
 
 My father was just such an ordinary- 
 fellow till I grew up myself and became 
 a father and an ordinary man. Now it 
 comes to me sometimes that he was quite 
 a good deal of a kind of hero, father was, 
 in his time. 
 
 "Jerry," said he, one day when I was 
 213
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 a school-boy, "you'll get some of this non- 
 sense knocked out of your head one of 
 these days." 
 
 "Father," said I, "I'll not do anything 
 of the kind. You don't understand me; 
 you never have; you never will." 
 
 "Humpf!" said father. 
 
 "Bert," said I to my son only the 
 other day, "when you're as old as I am 
 you'll learn a thing or two. You'll learn 
 to" 
 
 "Father," said he, his eyes blazing like 
 coals "father, I'll never be an old duffer." 
 
 "Tut!" said I, "ami" 
 
 "And, father," said he, " I'm not a child 
 any more like Leslie," and burst into 
 tears. 
 
 Then I remembered that I had forgot- 
 ten myself even most boyish of fathers 
 will. I had been trying to make him see 
 things my way it was all so plain to me ; 
 he had been trying to make me see things 
 his way it was all so plain to him; and 
 he won't see my way for years, and I I'll 
 214
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 never quite see things his way any more 
 and there you are, and a nice sort of pickle 
 we do get into now and then. 
 
 Am I an old duffer, I wonder? I am 
 not a boy any longer, it is true; and if I 
 am not a boy or a general or something 
 I suppose Bert's right, after all. The 
 little bird bears him out. Something 
 warm and glowing and impudent has 
 departed. I just live on from day to day, 
 working for the boys and Kate. Kate! 
 Bert loves his mother; yes, but wait a 
 while till he gets to the wife-age. His 
 wife never will breathe hard on the stairs. 
 She will be a fairy always and read poems 
 in a rose garden. . . . Now, how in Jericho 
 did I guess that? Did I nonsense! 
 And suppose I did ? I was only a young 
 fool then. Now old duffer old duffer, 
 hey? He ought to be ashamed of him- 
 self, the rapscallion, calling names. 
 
 Dear Kate! who writes that she never 
 was half so lazy and free from the little 
 things that look so tall but adds, I note, 
 215
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 that a month is a long, long while to stay 
 away. There she is eighty miles and al- 
 most five days yonder, on the other side 
 of Care, yet sighs to be back again. 
 
 "... I am having a lovely, lovely time," 
 she writes to me. "It is so restful here. 
 It is doing me a world of 
 
 See how she tries her best to be blithe 
 about it! 
 
 "... Still I should love to see you, d 
 Jerry" (she makes her J's like D's), "and 
 the boys and Barbara 
 
 Wives, after all, are such dependent 
 souls! And then again, over the page 
 here: 
 
 " There is no hurry in this charming " 
 
 Not that. 
 
 "I can sleep so late in the " 
 
 Nor that. 
 
 " I had the best" 
 
 Hm that's about the picnic. Oh, here 
 it is: 
 
 "Do you realize that four whole days 
 have gone already?" 
 216
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 I was afraid a month would be too 
 much for her. 
 
 " And do you realize that there are more 
 than three whole weeks yet left to play" 
 "stay," she means, though it looks like 
 "play" "yes, three whole weeks, Jerry " 
 (listen to this!), " and never a peep at my 
 three dear boys and that one little al- 
 most-girl-of-ours !" 
 
 Now if that is not lonesomeness but! 
 see how she ends: 
 
 "A month is a long, long while to stay 
 away." 
 
 You can hear her sighing between the 
 lines, yet she thinks she is fooling me! 
 Three merry pages that would not cheat a 
 ninny, let alone a husband then at the 
 very end, when she thinks herself safe, 
 bubbles over and gives the whole thing 
 away. 
 
 "A month is a long" dear girl, she 
 
 never could quite conceal herself "long 
 
 while." And it is, when you come to think 
 
 of it one- twelfth of a year! Think of a 
 
 217
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 woman away from her home and children 
 and flowers and buttons to sew on one- 
 twelfth of a twelvemonth! No wonder 
 her heart fails her, and only five days 
 gone. I should be lonesome myself. 
 
 You cannot work for the ones you love, 
 year in, year out, and find much joy away 
 from them. I know myself, for the very 
 winds now sing to me of home, because 
 of home I have been always thinking 
 as they've murmured by me, mornings, 
 evenings, all these years. Sunbeams and 
 shadows playing in my way remind me 
 of children romping; evening skies tell me 
 of Kate, always of Kate because in a 
 path under stars and pear-trees we have 
 walked together when the day's work was 
 done, arm in arm, brushing the currant 
 bushes as we passed, bending our heads 
 under a bough just low enough for a leap- 
 ing boy. 
 
 I was thinking this evening in the gar- 
 den, in that very path it was a wonder- 
 ful mild May twilight, too fragrant far to 
 218
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 remain in-doors, and somehow I had no 
 heart for books, though I tried them, one 
 by one I was thinking of this and that, 
 and Kate. Life, it is true, is a little quiet- 
 er than we had planned but so the brook 
 comes down the hill-side, singing bravely 
 of how its waters will stir the valley 
 yet they flow below there sweetly, calmly, 
 without a murmur, and far more deeply 
 than before. And there, also, they feed 
 the meadows ; before they had only wetted 
 a few bright pebbles and moss-grown 
 stones. 
 
 So did the brook love of Beecher's Lane 
 come plashing into Chaffinch Street and 
 where before in its hill-side pools among 
 the rocks it paused but long enough to 
 reflect a leaf or two of the world above it, 
 here in the open it has lingered tranquilly 
 to give back cloud for cloud and star for 
 star. 
 
 But who shall make words run as the 
 days run not too blithely nor yet too 
 grimly sadly here and sweetly there, 
 219
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 smoothly, silently, where the depths are, 
 babbling gayly over shallows. How shall 
 a man find words for his own love-story- 
 morning words with the dawn just shining 
 through them, noontide words with the 
 sun hot in their skies, words of evening 
 with twilit shadows, night words still and 
 wonderful as with the moonbeam's witch- 
 ery? 
 
 I tried the house again the garden was 
 so still. I tried my pipe, my books, but 
 rose and tramped again in the little path- 
 way. The place seemed quiet as the tomb. 
 The boys had gone up-stairs early. Bar- 
 bara was away. It was a silent, moody 
 kind of night. 
 
 Now I love flowers less to pluck them 
 than to watch them, happy in the places 
 where they once were little, and to snuff 
 them in with the airs they scent. To- 
 night that fragrance of Kate's dear gar- 
 den I was thinking of her, and it seem- 
 ed to me as I looked backward that I 
 might have been kinder sometimes. I was 
 220
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 thinking of her and her boys, she calls 
 us, all three of us nay, four there are to 
 this very day, for even as I walked to- 
 night with the sound of leaves above me, 
 I heard a wind blowing in some other, 
 some half -remembered May and Jamie's 
 voice. 
 
 Then selfishly I fell to thinking of that 
 one of four who first grew up, and then 
 grew down again to be, Kate says some- 
 times, the youngest of them all. 
 
 "Where," I asked, "are the sabre scars 
 on those apple-cheeks, round and ruddy? 
 Ay, there are seams there and about the 
 corners of that old mouth! What of the 
 blood and the smoke and the bugles blow- 
 ing?" 
 
 I asked it of that little boy grown griz- 
 zled in a nameless war, and now never 
 to be a hero. 
 
 " Tell me," I asked, " how was it that ' a 
 youth and ruddy and of a fair counte- 
 nance' went out to conquer a Philistine 
 world with ' five smooth stones out of the 
 15 221
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 brook, in a shepherd's bag' and came 
 back but an uncle-y goodman, and with- 
 out a tale for his children climbing upon 
 his knee ? Where did you get those scars 
 then, Jerry Down?" 
 
 The world was silent. I lingered long 
 after all in the street seemed sleeping 
 yet was not alone. I had gone inside. 
 The clock struck twelve as I turned to the 
 windows to shut them for the night. I 
 heard a noise without. I peered out cau- 
 tiously. All seemed quiet, but still I lis- 
 tened. Suddenly I heard again a kind 
 of grating sound, which came, I thought, 
 from the old pear-tree. 
 
 "Odd," said I, with a queer kind of 
 prickling in my hair. " Some one is break- 
 ing in!" 
 
 Then a shadow dropped from those 
 dark boughs and, mark you, with a 
 thud! 
 
 "Early for pears," said I. "Some one 
 is breaking out." 
 
 But all was silent. I drew back care- 
 222
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 fully and put out the light. There was a 
 whisper then: 
 
 "All right. Come on." 
 
 Another from above somewhere: 
 
 "I'm afraid." 
 
 "Sh! not so loud." 
 
 " But I can't reach it." 
 
 " I think," said I, " I will pick that fruit," 
 and I stole noiselessly from the window. 
 To the garden is but a step from the kitchen 
 doorway, and as I walked there, full in the 
 moonlight, smoking and musing of that 
 fairy world of nocturnal May, I thought to 
 myself: How beautiful is an aging pear- 
 tree, though it leans decrepitly upon a sill ! 
 
 "And what an odd, gnarled trunk!" I 
 said, aloud. " I never noticed that bump 
 before." 
 
 A strange bump, too, it was ; no matter 
 from where you viewed it, it seemed to be 
 always on the farther side. 
 
 I seated myself where the moon was 
 brightest sat there a full half-hour if I 
 sat a minute. Then I heard a sigh. 
 223
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 " Dear little boys," I murmured, " asleep 
 up-stairs." 
 
 The bump was motionless. 
 
 "Never," I mused, but so that the 
 world might hear if so it chose "nev- 
 er were two such good little sons as 
 mine." 
 
 I was not sure, but the bump seemed 
 lower. 
 
 "Always obedient," I went on. "Al- 
 ways frank and manly oh, never sneak- 
 ing!" 
 
 Can a bump sob? 
 
 I hummed a little to hide any sounds 
 that might be around. 
 
 " Pleasant night, don't you think, Ber- 
 tie?" 
 
 There was an awful stillness. Not a 
 leaf stirred. Then, 
 
 "Y-yes, sir," said the bump. 
 
 " Pleasant pear-tree, too," said I. 
 
 "Y-yes, sir." 
 
 " But shady," I said. " Have you tried 
 the moonlight?" 
 
 224
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "N-no, sir," the bump replied. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "There w- wasn't time." 
 
 "Leslie, too," said I, "surely he would 
 have liked to be here." 
 
 "He c -couldn't come, sir," said the 
 bump. 
 
 "Too bad. Why not?" 
 
 "He c-couldn't reach it?" 
 
 " Ah," said I. " What was the game ?" 
 
 There was no reply. 
 
 "Melons aren't ripe," I said, irrelevant- 
 ly. "What was the game, anyhow?" 
 
 "Knights," said the bump. It was a 
 shy-voiced bump. 
 
 "And you," said I, "were?" 
 
 "Lanc'lot." 
 
 " Ah ! You had been imprisoned, as it 
 were?" 
 
 "Y-yes, sir." 
 
 It was a beautiful mgnt for knights. I 
 had half a mind "Tut," I told myself, 
 "you're an old fool, Jerry." 
 
 "It's one o'clock," said I, knocking the 
 225
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 ashes from my pipe. "Think I'll turn in, 
 if you don't mind, Lancelot." 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 "Mind going back alone?" I asked "in 
 the dark?" 
 
 "Oh no, sir," said the bump, bravely. 
 
 "The way you came?" I asked. 
 
 "Yes, sir." It was an eager bump. 
 
 "Good-night," said I. 
 
 I went inside. Carefully I locked the 
 doors behind me. Then, as I stood up- 
 stairs, musing by the window of Kate's 
 room and mine, a pleasant, grating sound 
 came from the pear-tree and made me 
 sigh.
 
 VI 
 
 RID AY : I walked homeward 
 from the office, it was so golden 
 an afternoon. Why, I know 
 not, but my spirits sank slowly 
 with the sun. Even the pleas- 
 ant sound of bells in the street 
 behind me sent my thoughts backward to 
 Beecher's Lane. 
 Tinkle-tinkle-tinkle-tinkle 
 "Cow-bells," said I, thinking of the 
 meadows, of Bess and Buttercup, Milk- 
 weed and Daisy the Beecher Jerseys 
 and the boy named Bill who drove them, 
 on just such soft-aired evenings, through 
 the bars. I wonder where that lad is now. 
 Tinkle-tinkle 
 
 They were coming nearer, some herd, 
 doubtless, bound for the country. 
 227
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Tinkle-tinkle-tinkle-tinkle 
 
 It was irresistible. I stopped and turn- 
 ed to them. 
 
 "Ra-ags!" 
 
 Bah! It was nothing but an old- 
 clothes cart with cow-bells strung across 
 a wire and tinkling mockingly. I could 
 have throttled the dirty little Jew. 
 
 "As he ought to be," I growled, "for 
 driving such an old, little grandfather of a 
 horse." 
 
 Tinkle-tinkle 
 
 "Poor old cow-bells," thought I, sadly, 
 to myself as I turned my back again or, 
 rather, it was a boy grown tall who mused 
 of them. " Sweet, old bells, to what base 
 usage you have fallen in these evil days 
 you who were once the trade-mark of 
 scented lanes." 
 
 The town still grows and changes. Soon, 
 I suppose, they will ask for our gray-blue 
 house and its vines and lilacs and its old 
 pear-trees. The square opposite was sold 
 this morning every gray stone of it, every 
 228
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 green leaf and fragrant flower to build, 
 they tell me, a row of flats there, five 
 stories high, ere the year is gone. 
 
 I turned at my gate to gaze at the grim 
 old mansion, feeling a sadness for its doom. 
 
 "Poor, frowning thing," I mused. "I 
 wonder if any one ever loved you?" 
 
 The Princess did not; in years she has 
 never been once in Chaffinch Street. Her 
 father, the millionaire, died long ago. 
 Her mother's cheeks, they say, must have 
 been very beautiful when she was young; 
 and she herself, Princess of a boy's first 
 wondering dream of gold, is a widow now. 
 The captain, it seems, proved far too 
 handsome to love but one woman; the 
 Princess, I hear it whispered, proved far 
 too fair to waste that beauty sighing, so 
 she holds a court somewhere in Italy (on 
 a terrace, Barbara), from which float airy 
 rumors now and then. First it was to 
 be a count, and then a baron; when last 
 we heard it was to be only another of 
 those e very-day millionaires. 
 229
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 As I gazed at her old home opposite 
 I felt a pity for its loneliness. When its 
 stones are razed there will be no one to 
 shed a tear for them; no one has dwelt 
 among them long enough to care, and so 
 to no one will those shattered walls be so 
 many broken pieces of a precious past. 
 
 No one ? 
 
 Yes, I told myself, there will be two 
 mourners there two who never owned 
 stick or stone or leaf or flower in all that 
 square will watch their passing and be 
 sorry, for the sake of other days and other 
 dreams, however sad or foolish and cast 
 away. 
 
 Then I turned to my little home behind 
 me old and scarred but seeming a part 
 of its flowered setting. I felt a tugging 
 at my heart-strings. 
 
 "Sell you! You, little house! You!" 
 I told myself. I could have crushed it in 
 my arms. Why, all my world was there 
 all, then, save Katie. For after Jamie and 
 his little years had gone, the gray -blue 
 230
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 house grew slowly, strangely beautiful with 
 vines and memories and the voices of other 
 children climbing its lap in play. Lilacs 
 and pear-trees, gables and moss-grown 
 shingles, the little garden, the little walk 
 bordered by pinks and leading downward 
 from the great world world of love into 
 the little one world of toil in time have 
 shone again, something as on that first 
 morning when the little boy who was to 
 be a hero ran up those three gray steps 
 beyond the jug. 
 
 In life we found, in life as in love, even 
 the common things blossomed in course of 
 time. Things in the first chapters have 
 wondrous meaning, sometimes, in the end. 
 
 Only this morning there came a car- 
 penter to mend a leak in the old roof. 
 
 "Careful!" said I. "Don't rub the 
 moss off those shingles." 
 
 The fellow turned on his ladder and 
 grinned derisively. 
 
 "If I owned 'em I'd chuck 'em all," 
 said he. 
 
 231
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "I'm not so sure of that," I replied, 
 warmly. "Genuine cedar shingles don't 
 grow on every roof, and those were laid 
 there long before you were born, young 
 man." 
 
 "That there vine," said he, "ought to 
 come off." 
 
 "Hold on!" I cried; "the leak isn't 
 there!" 
 
 "No, but there'll be one there, and in 
 mighty short order, too, if you let that 
 vine lie around." 
 
 "Never mind," said I, "we won't cross 
 bridges. That vine has lain there some 
 little time." 
 
 "Just as you say," he retorted, test- 
 ily, "but, as the fellow says, 'an ounce of 
 prevent-ation is worth a pound of cure.' ' 
 
 " A new way of putting it," said I. 
 
 "And vines make houses r -rotten" he 
 called down to me, wrenching a shingle 
 off by way of emphasis. It brought the 
 blood to my face. 
 
 "Easy! easy!" I protested, shuddering, 
 232
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 for to me it was surgery that the brute 
 was performing there. When it was over 
 I breathed more easily, but at that glaring 
 yellow patch I shook my head. 
 
 " Now if your whole roof was like that," 
 said the carpenter, "and you'd tear down 
 them old vines and pull up some of them 
 old bushes and trim up these here old 
 trees, you'd have as neat-a-looking place 
 as there is in Chaffinch Street." 
 
 "Pardon me," said I. "Do you think 
 it will rain?" 
 
 "Does look some like it," he replied, 
 scanning the sky. 
 
 "Thank God," I said, so fervently that 
 he stared inquiringly. ' ' A few good storms, 
 young man," I added, pausing to let his 
 brain catch up to me, "will heal that 
 gaping wound up there." 
 
 Barbara tells me that after I had 
 gone he turned to her and tapped his 
 forehead with the knuckles of his hairy 
 hand. 
 
 Dear Barbara! Her hands are full of 
 233
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 boys. I found her sitting in the garden 
 with a pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 "Why, what's the matter, pretty one?" 
 said I. 
 
 "N-no thing," she replied, sighing and 
 twisting a damp little lace-edged square. 
 
 "Come, come," I said, seating myself 
 beside her. " There is something wrong !" 
 
 Still she was silent. I slipped my arm 
 about her and drew her cosily to my side. 
 
 "Tired?" I asked. 
 
 "N-nop." 
 
 "Angry?" 
 
 "N-nop." 
 
 "Just sad?" 
 
 She nodded her head. 
 
 "Why?" I asked. "Is it the boys?" 
 
 She nodded again. Then she found a 
 little shred of a piping voice, tremulous, 
 threatening to break. 
 
 "They they were horrid!" 
 
 "To you?" I asked. 
 
 "Um. I only I only wanted them to 
 be clean that's all." 
 234
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Were they little pigs?" 
 
 "Yes. They were all speckle-dy." 
 
 "Spattered, you mean?" 
 
 "Yes, speckle-dy. I told them they 
 mustn't go over to the Pidgeons' till 
 they'd washed their faces, but they 
 went." 
 
 "Are they over there now?" I asked, 
 preparing to follow. 
 
 "No. The Pidgeons took them for a 
 trolley ride." 
 
 "All speckle-dy?" 
 
 "Yes. They wouldn't wash, and they 
 laughed at me." 
 
 "Little wretches!" I muttered. 
 
 "Uncle Jerry, I try so hard to be a 
 m-m-mother to them." 
 
 I had never seen so many tears. There 
 was a whole brook of them trickling 
 down. 
 
 "Darling," said I, "now don't you cry. 
 I know how " 
 
 "But I'm so young, Uncle Jerry." 
 "There, there," said I. "You are 
 235
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 doing beautifully, beautifully, my dear 
 Barbara, beautifully. Why, the devil 
 himself couldn't manage those boys some- 
 times. Even I can't always do it." 
 
 "Aunt Kate can." 
 
 "Ah, well, Aunt Kate, of course. But 
 she's their mother." 
 
 " I try to do just as she does." 
 
 "Yes, I know," I said. 
 
 "I try to be sweet with them." 
 
 "And you are sweet with them, my 
 dear. Doesn't it work?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " I called them ' dearies,' " she explained, 
 " and they laughed at me." 
 
 "Imps!" said I. "Wait till I" 
 
 "The sweeter I am the badder they 
 are." With that she laughed a little her- 
 self and put her hair out of her eyes. 
 
 "I know I'm a sight!" she said being 
 a woman, albeit young. 
 
 "You're an angel," I declared. "Poor 
 little soul, they shall go down on their 
 knees to you. You shall see. Now they 
 236
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 really adore you, my dear, though they 
 are a bit awkward at showing it, I'll ad- 
 mit. But, come now be of good cheer." 
 
 "You're not so terribly cheerful your- 
 self, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "What!" said I. "Not cheerful I?" 
 
 "You're putting it on," she replied. 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Why, your face, Uncle Jerry, when 
 you came up the path, was as long as 
 
 1 ' Nonsense !' ' said I . "I was only think- 
 ing." 
 
 "Why did you sigh so?" 
 
 "Sigh so? I sigh?" 
 
 "Yes twice. Before you came by the 
 bush and saw me here." 
 
 "Did I?" 
 
 "You sighed twice." 
 
 "I was tired, I suppose." 
 
 "No," said my niece, firmly. "It was 
 not a tired sigh." 
 
 "But you were so busy sighing your- 
 self," I protested, "how did you happen 
 to notice me?" 
 
 16 237
 
 THE FLOWER OP YOUTH 
 
 "Aunt Kate told me to." 
 
 "To what?" 
 
 "Watch." 
 
 "Watch what?" 
 
 "You." 
 
 "Me?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "Signs." 
 
 "Signs!" I cried "of what, Barbara?" 
 
 " Lonesomeness." 
 
 "I lonesome!" I exclaimed. "7, with 
 you here and the boys and all these nice 
 little birds and things! It is far more 
 likely that your aunt is homesick, my 
 dear." 
 
 "She does seem homesick," said my 
 niece. 
 
 "You think so, too?" I inquired. 
 
 "Oh yes, Uncle Jerry. You can see it 
 sticking right out of her letters." 
 
 "Well, do you know," said I, "that's 
 just what I've been thinking." 
 
 "There where she said don't you re- 
 238
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 member, Uncle Jerry? in her last letter 
 the part where she said she would have 
 given that whole tea-party for one good 
 cup with us at home ? That sounded aw- 
 fully suspicious, I thought." 
 
 "I noticed it, too." 
 
 "And there where she spoke about 
 Leslie taking cold, Uncle Jerry 
 
 "Yes," said I, "I remember." 
 
 "Where she said, 'Jerry, now do be 
 careful about keeping him covered nights.' 
 Why, I could just hear Aunt Kate!" 
 
 "Yes, yes," said I. "Oh, she misses 
 us, Barbara. She misses us. There isn't 
 a doubt about it. Leslie's a little delicate, 
 you know, and Kate's always worrying 
 about him." 
 
 "He seemed flushed to-day," said my 
 niece. "I was a little worried myself, 
 but I think it was the heat." 
 
 "He'd been playing hard, doubtless," 
 I said. 
 
 "Yes. Wild West." 
 
 "That would account for it. Oh, she's 
 239
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 homesick, Barbara. There is no use talk- 
 ing she's homesick. And, I tell you, 
 when I think of that poor girl up there 
 suffering loneliness is suffering home- 
 sick and lonely, while you and I and the 
 boys are having such such jolly times 
 together down here at home why, I by 
 George! it doesn't seem right somehow. 
 It seems selfish in us." 
 
 " I had meant to do so much this week," 
 sighed Barbara. "I wanted to read, but 
 somehow I haven't felt like it." 
 
 "Nor I," r replied. "The books have 
 been stupid. The tobacco's been strong. 
 I don't know what's got into it, but I'm 
 afraid I shall have to change my brand. 
 It used to be mild, but the last few pipes 
 I've smoked George! I don't seem to en- 
 joy it at all. I tried to read Pickwick 
 last night, and, do you know, it seemed to 
 me that there were several scenes there 
 just a lee-tie bit overdrawn." 
 
 "The house hasn't seemed the same," 
 said my niece. 
 
 240
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "And the garden," said I; "have you 
 noticed anything anything in particular, 
 Barbara, about the garden?" 
 
 "The garden?" she queried, looking 
 about her. 
 
 " It may sound foolish, I'll admit," said 
 I, " but I've been watching, and, by George ! 
 it seems to me that there aren't so many 
 flowers blooming since Kate went away. 
 Now I've read somewhere that there are 
 people who have a most wonderfully 
 healthful influence over plants, so that 
 flowers always grow for them, while for 
 other folk, in the very same identical 
 place, they only wilt and die." 
 
 "She's always fussing about with a 
 trowel," said my niece. "Don't you 
 think that might account for it?" 
 
 "Possibly," I replied. "Still, I have 
 a notion that there is more in the mere 
 influence than we imagine. It is true 
 in other matters on you and me, for in- 
 stance, as we have said, Kate's influence 
 is sweet and soothing " 
 241
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "And trowel-y?" my niece suggested. 
 
 "Yes," I assented, laughing. "Trow- 
 el-y, to be sure. I'm awfully weedy just 
 at present, Barbara. Well, now, if it is 
 true of human beings, why not of flow- 
 ers?" 
 
 "It's a nice idea," she said. 
 
 "We know," said I, "that she is lone- 
 some for her garden. She says as much. 
 Well, do you know, I can believe that her 
 garden is lonesome for her." 
 
 "I'd like to see her myself," Barbara 
 confessed. 
 
 "Would you?" I asked. "Just how 
 do you feel about it. How does it affect 
 you, I mean? Does the house seem large, 
 for instance?" 
 
 "O-oh, big!" she answered. 
 
 "And kind of hollow-sounding?" 
 
 "Echo-y," said my niece. 
 
 "And do you catch yourself yawning?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And sighing all day long, without any 
 particular reason that you can think of?' 
 242
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Yes, often, Uncle Jerry. And I get 
 sleepy by eight o'clock." 
 
 "And does the dark out in the yard," I 
 asked, "seem still and dismal?" 
 
 "Spooky," she replied, shuddering. 
 
 "And the trolley-cars," said I, "away 
 off in the distance, while you are trying 
 to get to sleep, do they sound like some 
 one moaning?" 
 
 "Yes," cried my niece. "I had never 
 thought of it but they do, Uncle Jerry! 
 They do!" 
 
 "And do you lie there listening," said I 
 -"listening and turning, and turning 
 and listening, and thinking and wonder- 
 ing why in the name of time they ever 
 made weeks seven days long?" 
 
 "Yes," sighed Barbara, "it seems a 
 year since Saturday." 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 "Yours is certainly a most interesting 
 case, my dear," said I. 
 
 Then we sat awhile, silently, till Barbara 
 sighed. 
 
 243
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Dear Aunt Kate! She's so lovely." 
 
 "Yes," said I. 
 
 "So gentle," said my niece. 
 
 "Yes," said I. 
 
 "And so young, Uncle Jerry. Why, 
 she's twice as much fun as some of the 
 girls I know." 
 
 "I can believe you." 
 
 "Oh, I hope she'll never be disappoint- 
 ed, or anything, Uncle Jerry, and go and 
 get bitter like old Aunt Sarah." 
 
 "Never fear," said I. "It takes more 
 than a thunder-storm, Barbara, to sour 
 the milk of human kindness." 
 
 "Why, only to be in the same place 
 with her is beautiful," said my niece. 
 
 "Yes," I sighed. 
 
 "And her face, Uncle Jerry. Some- 
 times it's like a picture!" 
 
 "So it is." 
 
 "And her smile, Uncle Jerry. Did you 
 ever notice her smile?" 
 
 "Oh yes." 
 
 "And her eyes?" 
 
 244
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Often, my dear." 
 
 My niece was thoughtful. 
 
 "What is it, sometimes, in Aunt Kate's 
 eyes that makes them look as if the tears 
 were coming? Yet she doesn't cry." 
 
 I patted her hand. 
 
 "Ah, that, my dear, is Yesterday." 
 
 "Yesterday?" 
 
 "Yes all the things that have ever 
 happened." 
 
 " But then again, Uncle Jerry, her eyes 
 dance." 
 
 "Like yours," I said, smoothing her 
 hair. 
 
 "And what is that?" 
 
 "Well, that's To-morrow." 
 
 We both sat thinking again, silent, till 
 Barbara sighed it is contagious. 
 
 " I think I'll go in," I said, rising, "and 
 write a letter." 
 
 "I'm afraid I've been awfully foolish," 
 my niece apologized, rising with me, for 
 my arm was about her waist. "But I 
 just had to bubble over." 
 245
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Of course," I said. "We all do. She 
 will have it to-morrow morning if it's 
 mailed by six." 
 
 I had reached the bottom of the fourth 
 page, I remember, when a thought struck 
 me. 
 
 "By George! Barbara, I'd like to add 
 a postscript." 
 
 "To say what, Uncle Jerry?" 
 
 "Why not to stay any longer, if she 
 feels" 
 
 "Oh, what would Aunt Phcebe say?" 
 
 "I was thinking of that." 
 
 "It would never do," said my niece. 
 
 "No," I replied. "But do you really 
 think she'll stay the month out?" 
 
 "It doesn't seem so. A month is a 
 long time, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "So she says." 
 
 I addressed the envelope. 
 
 "By George!" said I. 
 
 "What, Uncle Jerry?" 
 
 "Nothing; I was only thinking." 
 
 I did not seal the letter just at once. 
 246
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 There was time enough to light my pipe, 
 and while I did so 
 
 "Barbara," said I, "did you feel of 
 Leslie's head when he came in flushed to- 
 day?" 
 
 "Yes. It was awfully hot. Still, he'd 
 been playing Wild West, you know." 
 
 "Were his hands dry?" 
 
 "Really, I didn't notice, Uncle Jerry." 
 
 "You should always be careful to ob- 
 serve that, Barbara. It is a very impor- 
 tant indication." 
 
 Then happening to remember that the 
 letter was still unsent, I added, hastily, a 
 line or two that had come to mind sealed 
 it, and took my hat. 
 
 "I'll run around to the sub-station," I 
 explained, "just to make sure that it goes 
 by six."
 
 VII 
 
 ATURDAY: I rose earlier than 
 my wont. The bloom was on 
 the morning, the boughs so full 
 of choristers I wondered I had 
 ever lain so deafly to a later 
 hour. The green below, the 
 cloudless, sun -bright blue above, the 
 breath of the garden still cool with night 
 and sweet with old-fashioned posies went 
 to my head like wine. 
 
 "Thank God!" said I, but less for the 
 morning, May-fair and wondrous though 
 it was, than for the brimming heart I felt 
 within. It was a sign to me that my 
 youth still flowered. 
 
 "Good-morning, James," I said to the 
 milkman's son. I said it carelessly, as 
 coldly, as condescendingly as I could to 
 248
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 prove, no doubt, that though I was still a 
 boy I was a man as well. Then I walked 
 soberly into the garden, which I think I 
 told you no? is called Kate's Delight. 
 When her callers come, even though after 
 three of a likely, fair afternoon, they are 
 apt to find her, I am told, with the water- 
 ing-can. It is not allowed by the regula- 
 tions, but no one cavils, I believe for 
 they go through the gate smiling and far 
 more gorgeously than they came. 
 
 " I will be gardener to-day," said I, "as 
 an appetizer." So I pruned a little. I 
 put wistaria in the parlor; in the dining- 
 room, almond flowers and bleeding-hearts ; 
 in the library, lilacs. 
 
 "Why, Uncle Jerry!" said a voice from 
 an upper window there was a sleepy face 
 there, too, I could hear plainly, but could 
 not see it for the screening leaves "I 
 thought you were abed." 
 
 "The morning," I replied, virtuously 
 for early risers, I observe, whether daily or 
 otherwise, can never let well-enough alone 
 249
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "the morning is far too fine for folk 
 to lie abed wasting the golden hours. For 
 shame, Barbara ! Slothful one, canst thou 
 not hear the dicky-birds carolling in the 
 greenwood-tree? Dost thou not see thy 
 uncle about a fragrant business of herbs 
 and honey? Up, girl! Up! Dost hear 
 me?" 
 
 There was no answer. It is the way 
 with sluggards, daily or otherwise. There 
 is no cheerfulness among them, no view- 
 halloo, no pipe and tabor, no repartee. 
 She came down yawning. 
 
 ' ' Lilacs, ' ' she said. ' ' Why, Uncle Jerry, 
 you" 
 
 "The vases were all so small," I said. 
 
 My niece looked pensive. I thought it 
 a cobweb hanging from some recent 
 dream, but it seems she was really think- 
 ing. 
 
 "Didn't you tell me once " she be- 
 gan. 
 
 "Possibly," I replied. 
 
 " Wasn't there something in a story you 
 250
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 made up for me don't you remember ? 
 that night last fall ? Why, yes, there was !' ' 
 
 "Was there?" 
 
 "Oh, Uncle Jerry!" she exclaimed. Her 
 eyes had lost all trace of sleep. 
 
 "What?" I asked, carelessly. 
 
 "Now I know." 
 
 "Know what?" 
 
 "Why you wouldn't make Madelaine 
 tall and willowy." 
 
 "Barbara," said I, "don't you want to 
 get two or three sprays of bridal wreath 
 for that table there?" 
 
 While she was gone Bert and Leslie 
 came down the banister. One astir is apt 
 to be all astir in the morning. Let me 
 leave no unkind impression of those boys. 
 We had settled that score of Barbara's 
 painlessly, on the whole the night before. 
 They had bowed down humbly before her 
 and had risen the better men for it. This 
 morning they looked the world frankly in 
 the eyes. 
 
 I gazed meditatively upon them, care- 
 251
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 ful, however, to conceal the admiration 
 I confess I felt. In the first place, they 
 were mine but that, let me say it honest- 
 ly, had nothing to do with their good looks, 
 which are of Kate, nor with that taking 
 way of theirs, which is of Kate also, and 
 which, as I told myself this morning, is 
 so irresistible that the devil himself must 
 melt before it and be moved to leave them 
 to the end the angels that they are at 
 heart. It may be that they coddle their 
 father, just a bit, now and again, but he 
 thrives upon it, for it is wonderful how 
 the flower of a man's youth ay, or 
 woman's will bloom perennially tended 
 by little hands. 
 
 Here, then, are two somethings to smile 
 at, even when I am sad, even when I am 
 fretted, say, after all my philosophy, by 
 the pinching way the world has with a 
 man's pocket-book for, remember, pony- 
 time is drawing nigh again. This I know 
 as a father, mind, for I never guessed it 
 as a younger boy ; fate has no lash in store 
 252
 
 THE FLOWER OP YOUTH 
 
 for me so stinging that the sight of those 
 two young sons of mine, sound of their 
 voices, glance of their eyes, or touch of 
 their sun-browned hands cannot make me 
 grin and bear. 
 
 What they saw this morning was only 
 an elderly sort of fellow gazing upon them 
 in a calm (in dear old Pickwick it would 
 have been a benevolent) sort of way from 
 the garden bench, while they ran foot-races 
 to his knees. 
 
 "Well," said I, as we sat at breakfast, 
 " she has her letter." 
 
 It sounds but simple, and I said it 
 casually with my eyes on my porridge- 
 bowl, but, I give you my word for it, 
 I felt relieved that my mind was free 
 again. 
 
 "Who's 'she,' father?" 
 
 "There's only one, my boy." 
 
 "Mother?" 
 
 "Who else would it be?" 
 
 "What letter, father?" 
 
 " The one I mailed last night at six." 
 17 253
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 " Father," cried Bert, " if we could only 
 surprise her!" 
 "Surprise her?" 
 "Yes go to Pineville all of us!" 
 
 ' ' But how about trains ? Do they run, ' ' 
 I asked, "on Saturday afternoons?" 
 
 "Why, Uncle Jerry," said my niece, 
 " you know they do. Else why were you 
 looking at the time-table while I went for 
 the flowers?" 
 
 " Do all time-tables do all roads lead 
 to Pineville, Barbara Burton?" 
 
 "No, but that one did. It had a blue 
 cross upon it." 
 
 "And all blue-cross trains, I suppose, 
 Mistress Barbara, run to Pineville?" 
 
 " Uncle Jerry, you were planning to run 
 away!" 
 
 "To spend Sunday, father!" cried my 
 elder son. 
 
 "Father, take me!" cried my younger. 
 
 "Me, too, father!" 
 ' "Oh, Uncle Jerry!" 
 
 And they doubted every protesting word 
 
 254
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 I said. They would not trust me to go 
 alone for my hat, but peered suspiciously 
 for some sign, outward and visible, of a 
 scheme within. They looked for an old- 
 fashioned black valise which has stood for 
 years in the garret dust. Kate, they 
 knew, had the only good bag the house 
 affords. They followed me down the walk 
 to the gate. They watched me pass thence 
 to the corner, and, as I turned it, waved 
 good-bye to me with a wistfulness that 
 seemed to say, "Till Monday." 
 
 "By George!" said I, "I've a good 
 mind" 
 
 And the more I thought of it the more 
 it seemed to me a goodly sort of picture: 
 two boys, illumined Barbara getting 
 them into their blue -and -white -striped 
 waists and tying their ties for them ar- 
 raying herself in a certain fetching little 
 rosebud kind of Sunday gown, while I 
 stand by in a clean collar with a watch 
 open in my hand ! 
 
 "By George!" said I. 
 
 2 5S
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 And on the cars ! telegraph-poles a-pop- 
 ping by us and May fields with their dan- 
 delions and sheep two boys wiggling on 
 one seat, Barbara and I sedate but cheer- 
 ful on the other opposite to say nothing 
 of the tin cup shining at the aisle's far 
 end, a beacon beckoning to happy little 
 travelling boys. 
 
 "George!" said I, again. 
 
 Brother George, I meant Brother 
 George at the Pineville station, summoned 
 by telegram his three-seat waiting there 
 by the yellow 'bus and Kate, Kate, dear 
 old girl, on the platform, smothered in boys ! 
 
 "Look out where you're going, can't 
 you!" 
 
 It was a nasty voice, hot-breathed and 
 growling in my very ear, like a bull-dog's. 
 I begged the fellow's pardon begged it 
 twice, but he only scowled at me. Talk 
 of courtesy! I heard him damning his 
 foot, I think it was, or me, I'm not quite 
 sure as I turned up the office steps. 
 
 Well, it all came about this very even- 
 256
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 ing as I had seen: two little sons, illu- 
 mined their clean waists, blue and white, 
 and their ties tied for them Barbara 
 in her rosebud gown, and I in a clean 
 collar two wiggling sons, as I have said 
 Barbara cheerful, and I, and Kate! 
 Kate at the journey's end smothered in 
 boys! but not (oh, bless you, no!) not 
 in Pineville. It was on our own little 
 gray-blue porch with the sun just going 
 down and the moon rising. 
 
 "Kate!" I cried. 
 
 "Jerry, darling!" 
 
 "Dear heart," said I, "why, how did 
 you happen I thought why you said 
 you would stay a month!" 
 
 " I know, but you wrote '* 
 
 "Yes, but I didn't mean I didn't 
 dream I would frighten you." 
 
 "Frighten me!" 
 
 "Yes about Leslie." 
 
 "Leslie!" 
 
 "Why, didn't you get it my letter? 
 I mailed it last night at six." 
 257
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Letter! Leslie!" 
 
 "Oh, it's nothing," I cried. "He got 
 overheated, that's all, and I 
 
 "But, Jerry, he's all right now?" 
 
 "Oh yes. But I happened to men- 
 tion" 
 
 "Why, his head is cool." 
 
 "Cool as January. Of course. I was 
 foolish enough to put it down in the letter 
 I wrote last night, and I thought was 
 afraid it had scared you home. But you 
 haven't told us." 
 
 "Oh, I just thought I would come." 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 " You didn't expect me to stay a month, 
 did you?" 
 
 "I wondered if you could, you seemed 
 so lonely." 
 
 "Lonely! Why, Jerry Down, it was 
 you who were lonely." 
 
 "I!" 
 
 "You! Your letters were the mourn- 
 fulest things I ever saw. That's why I 
 came." 
 
 258
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "My letters mournful!" 
 
 "As the grave, Jerry." 
 
 "Why why, I never once said I was 
 lonely. It was you who 
 
 "You didn't say so, that is true, but, 
 Jerry, Jerry, I could tell by the very blanks 
 between the lines that you never could 
 stand it a month. And you kept inferring 
 that 7 was lonely, and how could you 
 think that unless 
 
 "How could I think that! How could 
 I help thinking that, Kate Down ? Of all 
 the homesickest letters I ever read!" 
 
 "Mine!" 
 
 "Yours." 
 
 "Why, I never once " 
 
 "I can prove it by Barbara. She no- 
 ticed it, too." 
 
 "And you thought I was lonely!" said 
 my wife. 
 
 "And you thought / was lonely!" I re- 
 plied. 
 
 We looked at each other. 
 
 "Now I know!" cried Bert. 
 259
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "What?" we asked. 
 
 "Why father was looking at the time- 
 table this morning." 
 
 "And why he got up so early and put 
 the flowers around," said Barbara, slyly. 
 
 My wife looked at me. 
 
 "Tut!" said I. "The merest coinci- 
 dence." 
 
 "Why, how," said my wife, slowly 
 "how did you know I was coming?" 
 
 " I didn't. I didn't know anything." 
 
 "But what made you think I might 
 come, then?" 
 
 " I never said that I thought you might 
 come." 
 
 "Then why did you fix the flowers?" 
 Bert asked. 
 
 "And look at the time-table?" Barbara 
 inquired. 
 
 " Oh, I just glanced at it," said I " cas- 
 ually. It was on the table, I suppose, as 
 I passed, so I 
 
 " It was nothing of the kind," my niece 
 declared. "It was in the secretary, and 
 260
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 you went and got it yourself for I saw 
 you." 
 
 "Did I?" I inquired. 
 
 My wife's cheek pressed Leslie's brow 
 as he sat snuggled in her lap. Bert hung 
 upon her chair. Her eyes were spark- 
 ling. 
 
 "His head is cool," she said but slyly, 
 it seemed to me. 
 
 "Oh, yes cool now," said I, "but you 
 ought to have felt it yesterday eh, Bar- 
 bara?" 
 
 "It was hot," my niece assented, "but 
 Uncle Jerry decided it was only his playing 
 too hard." 
 
 ' ' What did you say in that letter, Jerry ?' ' 
 asked my wife. 
 
 "Why, I merely mentioned the inci- 
 dent," I explained. 
 
 " But as long as you thought it so triv- 
 ial, dearest," she reproved me, beaming 
 upon me, " I should think you would have 
 been afraid even to mention it for fear 
 of frightening me home, you know." 
 261
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "But you wanted to come," I retorted. 
 "Jerry!" 
 
 "You were just waiting for an excuse," 
 I said. 
 
 "Why, Jerry Down!" 
 
 "Uncle!" 
 
 "Father!" 
 
 I was one against three. 
 
 After the children had gone to bed we 
 were sitting together in the garden. It 
 was just such an evening as they put in 
 love-stories, moon-white and tranquil and 
 scented with spring. 
 
 " Now," said I, " we begin to live again." 
 
 " I couldn't stay," she told me. " It is 
 so lovely here. Were the boys," she ask- 
 ed "Just smell the lilacs, Jerry! were 
 the boys good while I was gone?". 
 
 "Angels," I told her. Then she was 
 silent awhile, laying her cheek against 
 my hand. 
 
 "Now if Jamie could only be here, 
 too," she said. 
 
 262
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 "Still thinking, Katie?" 
 
 "Not a day passes 
 
 "I know, dear one." 
 
 Then as we sat there talking, with that 
 little gray - blue house of ours bathed 
 in a fairy gloaming, we saw, through 
 the windows in the vines, the lamplight 
 golden on the lilacs I had plucked that 
 morn. 
 
 "You never noticed." 
 
 " Yes, when I first came in." 
 
 It was the Older Woman's face she turn- 
 ed to me, lovely with memories where the 
 dreams had been. 
 
 The clock struck midnight, there was 
 so much to say. Up-stairs by the very 
 window where the pear-tree knocks I 
 stood and watched her as she tucked them 
 in. 
 
 "Dear little sons," she whispered then 
 turned in the moonlight and took my 
 rough cheeks softly in her hands : 
 
 "My biggest boy oh, if they'll only be 
 like you!" she said. 
 
 263
 
 THE FLOWER OF YOUTH 
 
 Brook, did I call it ? It is a garden hid- 
 den behind a hedge. Trudging the high- 
 way you see no flowers blooming but 
 when the wind is kind a perfume comes 
 to you from somewhere near. 
 
 THE END
 
 ft<SEU
 
 ii nn n ' "