“You wrote those impressions of St. James’s Park at dawn?” she asked eagerly.

“I did.”

She smiled a smile of relief.

“Of course I knew that you were a reasonable person,” she pronounced.  “Why couldn’t you have said so at once?  Come along to tea.”

“Willingly,” he replied, rising to his feet.  “Is this your father coming across the lawn?”

She nodded.

“He’s rather a dear.  Do you know anything about Assyria?”

“Not a scrap.”

“That’s a pity,” she regretted.  “Come.  Father, this is Mr. Burton.  He is very hot and he is going to have tea with us, and he wrote those impressions in the Piccadilly Gazette which you gave me to read.  My father is an Oriental scholar, Mr. Burton, but he is also interested in modern things.”

Burton held out his hand.

“I try to understand London,” he said.  “It is enough for me.  I know nothing about Assyria.”

Mr. Cowper was a picturesque-looking old gentleman, with kind blue eyes and long white hair.

“It is quite natural,” he assented.  “You were born in London, without a doubt, you have lived there all your days and you write as one who sees.  I was born in a library.  I saw no city till I entered college.  I had fashioned cities for myself long before then, and dwelt in them.”

The girl had taken her place at the tea-table.  Burton’s eyes followed her admiringly.

“You were brought up in the country?” he asked his host.

“I was born in the City of Strange Imaginings,” Mr. Cowper replied.  “I read and read until I had learned the real art of fancy.  No one who has ever learned it needs to look elsewhere for a dwelling house.  It is the realism of your writing which fascinates me so, Mr. Burton.  I wish you would stay here and write of my garden; the moorland, too, is beautiful.”

“I should like to very much,” said Burton.

Mr. Cowper gazed at him in mild curiosity.

“You are a stranger to me, Mr. Burton,” he remarked.  “My daughter does not often encourage visitors.  Pray tell me, how did you make her acquaintance?” “There was a bull,” he commenced,—­“A cow,” she interrupted softly.

“On the moor outside.  Your daughter was a little terrified.  She accepted my escort after I had driven away the—­animal.”

The old gentleman looked as though he thought it the most natural thing in the world.

“Dear me,” he said, “how interesting!  Edith, the strawberries this afternoon are delicious.  You must show Mr.—­Mr. Burton our kitchen gardens.  Our south wall is famous.”

This was the whole miracle of how Alfred Burton, whose first appearance in the neighborhood had been as an extremely objectionable tripper, was accepted almost as one of the family in a most exclusive little household.  Edith, cool and graceful, sitting back in her wicker chair behind the daintily laid tea-table, seemed to take it all for granted.  Mr. Cowper, after rambling on for some time, made an excuse and departed through the French windows of his library.  Afterwards, Burton walked with his young hostess in the old-fashioned walled garden.