“If these were mine,” said Schmidt, “I could not for ever sell them.  What pleasure to see them grow and steal to themselves such sweet colors out of the rainbow which is in the light!”

“Thee would make a poor gardener,” said Wholesome, “sitting on thee fence in the sun and watching thee pumpkins—­damn nasty things anyhow!”

I looked up amazed at the oath, but Schmidt did not seem to remark it, and went on with us, lingering here and there to please himself with the lovely contrasts of the autumn fruit.

“Curious man is Schmidt,” remarked Wholesome as we passed along.  “I could wish thee had seen him when we took him this way first.  Old Betsey yonder sells magnolia flowers in June, and also pond-lilies, which thee may know as reasonably pleasant things to thee or me; but of a sudden I find our friend Schmidt kneeling on the pavement with his head over a tub of these flowers, and every one around much amazed.”

“Was it not seemly?” said Schmidt, joining us.  “There are who like music, but to me what music is there like the great attunement of color? and mayhap no race can in this rise over our black artists hereabout the market-ends.”

“Thee is crazed of many colors,” said Wholesome laughing—­“a bull of but one.”

Schmidt stopped short in the crowd, to Wholesome’s disgust.  “What,” said he, quite forgetful of the crowd, “is more cordial than color?  This he recalleth was a woman black as night, with a red turban and a lapful of magnolias, and to one side red crabs in a basket, and to one side a tubful of lilies.  Moss all about, I remember.”

“Come along,” said Wholesome.  “The man is cracked, and in sunny weather the crack widens.”

And so we went away down street to our several tasks, chatting and amused.

Those were most happy days for me, and I found at evening one of my greatest pleasures when Schmidt called for me after our early tea and we would stroll together down to the Delaware, where the great India ships lay at wharves covered with casks of madeira and boxes of tea and spices.  Then we would put out in his little rowboat and pull away toward Jersey, and, after a plunge in the river at Cooper’s Point, would lazily row back again while the spire of Christ Church grew dim against the fading sunset, and the lights would begin to show here and there in the long line of sombre houses.  By this time we had grown to be sure friends, and a little help from me at a moment when I chanced to guess that he wanted money had made the bond yet stronger.  So it came that he talked to me, though I was but a lad, with a curious freedom, which very soon opened to me a full knowledge of those with whom I lived.

One evening, when we had been drifting silently with the tide, he suddenly said aloud, “A lion in the fleece of the sheep.”

“What?” said I, laughing.

“I was thinking of Wholesome,” he replied.  “But you do not know him.  Yet he has that in his countenance which would betray a more cunning creature.”