“Well, we don’t end off this,” said Diana.  “There’s the giving, next.”

“And then their little laughs and Oo’s,” said Hazel.

“And their delight day after day; and the comfort of them in their little sicknesses,” said Miss Craydocke.

“And the stories that have got to be told about every picture,” said Dorris.

“No; nothing really nice does end; it goes on and on,” said Mrs. Ripwinkley.

“Of course!” said Hazel, triumphantly, turning on the Drummond light of her child-faith.  “We’re forever and ever people, you know!”

“Please paste some more flowers, Mr. Kincaid,” said Rosamond, who sat next him, stitching.  “I want to make an all-flower book of this.  No,—­not roses; I’ve a whole page already; this great white lily, I think.  That’s beautiful!”

“Wouldn’t it do to put in this laurel bush next, with the bird’s nest in it?”

“O, those lovely pink and white laurels!  Yes.  Where did you get such pictures, Miss Hazel?”

“O, everybody gave them to us, all summer, ever since we began.  Mrs. Geoffrey gave those flowers; and mother painted some.  She did that laurel.  But don’t call me Miss Hazel, please; it seems to send me off into a corner.”

Rosamond answered by a little irresistible caress; leaning her head down to Hazel, on her other side, until her cheek touched the child’s bright curls, quickly and softly.  There was magnetism between those two.

Ah, the magnetism ran round!

“For a child’s picture-book, Mrs. Ripwinkley?” said Mrs. Scherman, reaching over for the laurel picture.  “Aren’t these almost too exquisite?  They would like a big scarlet poppy just as well,—­perhaps better.  Or a clump of cat-o’-nine-tails,” she added, whimsically.

“There is a clump of cat-o’-nine-tails,” said Mrs. Ripwinkley.  “I remember how I used to delight in them as a child,—­the real ones.”

“Pictures are to tell things,” said Desire, in her brief way.

“These little city refugees must see them, somehow,” said Rosamond, gently.  “I understand.  They will never get up on the mountains, maybe, where the laurels grow, or into the shady swamps among the flags and the cat-o’-nine-tails.  You have picked out pictures to give them, Mrs. Ripwinkley.”

Kenneth Kincaid’s scissors stopped a moment, as he looked at Rosamond, pausing also over the placing of her leaves.

Desire saw that from the other side; she saw how beautiful and gracious this girl was—­this Rosamond Holabird; and there was a strange little twinge in her heart, as she felt, suddenly, that let there be ever so much that was true and kindly, or even tender, in her, it could never come up in her eyes or play upon her lips like that she could never say it out sweetly and in due place everything was a spasm with her; and nobody would ever look at her just as Kenneth Kincaid looked at Rosamond then.