This time the lady laughed outright. She even blushed a little.
"Very prettily put, Sir Flatterer" she retorted; "but when you are older, young man, you won't make your compliments quite so broad. I am no Lady of the Roses. I am Miss Holbrook; and—and I am not in the habit of receiving gentlemen callers who are uninvited and—unannounced," she concluded, a little sharply.
Pointless the shaft fell at David's feet. He had turned again to the beauties about him, and at that moment he spied the sundial—something he had never seen before.
"What is it?" he cried eagerly, hurrying forward. "It isn't exactly pretty, and yet it looks as if 't were meant for—something."
"It is. It is a sundial. It marks the time by the sun."
Even as she spoke, Miss Holbrook wondered why she answered the question at all; why she did not send this small piece of nonchalant impertinence about his business, as he so richly deserved. The next instant she found herself staring at the boy in amazement. With unmistakable ease, and with the trained accent of the scholar, he was reading aloud the Latin inscription on the dial: "'Horas non numero nisi serenas,' 'I count—no—hours but—unclouded ones,'" he translated then, slowly, though with confidence. "That's pretty; but what does it mean—about 'counting'?"
Miss Holbrook rose to her feet.
"For Heaven's sake, boy, who, and what are you?" she demanded. "Can YOU read Latin?"
"Why, of course! Can't you?" With a disdainful gesture Miss Holbrook swept this aside.
"Boy, who are you?" she demanded again imperatively.