The lights were out, the revelry done.
"Going walking now ?" asked my namesake.

He did not know how to behave at tea-parties, and, sitting at a little distance from us, he had been aiming an imaginary gun at every fat robin that mined the lawn for sustenance.
"Ask your father if you may go," I said.

I had heard Solon pacing his room--forever cogitating the imminent Potts.

I did not enter the house oftener than I could help, for always in those rooms I felt a troubled presence, a homesick thing that pushed two frail white hands against an intangible but sufficing curtain that held it from those it sickened for.

I could not long be easy there.
It was a day poised and serene, with white brush-dabs of cloud on a wonderful canvas of blue,--a day when I longed for the honeyed fragrance of the woods warming from the last night's rain.
But this was not to be my walk.