"I'd like to know why he ain't?" I protested indignantly.
Her lips quivered and went upward at the corners with a trick of expression which I found irresistible even then.
"It's a pity that it's time for you to go home," she observed politely.
"I reckon I can stay a little while longer," I returned.
She shook her head, but I had already gone back to the unfinished palace, and as the work progressed, she forgot her hint of dismissal in watching the fairy towers. We were still absorbed in the building when her mother came down the curving stairway and into the maze of box.
"It's time for you to run home now, pretty blue eyes," she said in her soft girlish way. Then catching our hands in hers, she turned with a merry laugh, and ran with us up the terraced walk.
"Is your mamma as beautiful as mine?" asked Sally, when we came to a breathless stop.
"She's as beautiful as—as a wax doll," I replied stoutly.
"That's right," laughed the lady, stooping to kiss me. "You're a dear boy. Tell your mother I said so."
She went slowly up the steps as she spoke, and when I looked back a moment later, I saw her smiling down on me between two great columns, with the snowball bush floating in the warm wind beneath her and the swallows flying low in the sunshine over her head.