“Poor dear Humphrey!” exclaimed Mrs. Pomfret, “he can think of nothing else but politics.”

But we are not to take up again, as yet, the deeds of the crafty Ulysses.  In order to relate an important conversation between Mrs. Pomfret and the Rose of Sharon, we have gone back a week in this history, and have left Victoria—­absorbed in her thoughts—­driving over a wood road of many puddles that led to the Four Corners, near Avalon.  The road climbed the song-laden valley of a brook, redolent now with scents of which the rain had robbed the fern, but at length Victoria reached an upland where the young corn was springing from the, black furrows that followed the contours of the hillsides, where the big-eyed cattle lay under the heavy maples and oaks or gazed at her across the fences.

Victoria drew up in front of an unpainted farm-house straggling beside the road, a farm-house which began with the dignity of fluted pilasters and ended in a tumble-down open shed filled with a rusty sleigh and a hundred nondescript articles—­some of which seemed to be moving.  Intently studying this phenomenon from her runabout, she finally discovered that the moving objects were children; one of whom, a little girl, came out and stared at her.

“How do you do, Mary?” said Victoria.  “Isn’t your name Mary?”

The child nodded.

“I remember you,” she said; “you’re the rich lady, mother met at the party, that got father a job.”

Victoria smiled.  And such was the potency of the smile that the child joined in it.

“Where’s brother?” asked Victoria.  “He must be quite grown up since we gave him lemonade.”

Mary pointed to the woodshed.

“O dear!” exclaimed Victoria, leaping out of the runabout and hitching her horse, “aren’t you afraid some of those sharp iron things will fall on him?” She herself rescued brother from what seemed untimely and certain death, and set him down in safety in the middle of the grass plot.  He looked up at her with the air of one whose dignity has been irretrievably injured, and she laughed as she reached down and pulled his nose.  Then his face, too, became wreathed in smiles.

“Mary, how old are you?”

“Seven, ma’am.”

“And I’m five,” Mary’s sister chimed in.

“I want you to promise me,” said Victoria, “that you won’t let brother play in that shed.  And the very next time I come I’ll bring you both the nicest thing I can think of.”

Mary began to dance.

“We’ll promise, we’ll promise!” she cried for both, and at this juncture Mrs. Fitch, who had run from the washtub to get into her Sunday waist, came out of the door.

“So you hain’t forgot me!” she exclaimed.  “I was almost afeard you’d forgot me.”

“I’ve been away,” said Victoria, gently taking the woman’s hand and sitting down on the doorstep.

“Don’t set there,” said Mrs. Fitch; “come into the parlour.  You’ll dirty your dress—­Mary!” This last in admonition.