"Good-morning, Rhoda."
"There he is, Auntie May!" I would cry. "Don't you see him? Look, Auntie May!"
Somehow, or other, although he never called to her, I always wanted her to see him, too.
He looked very pleasant in the bright sunshine. His hair was nicely brushed, and his shoes were blacked. There was a patch on his right elbow; but you could not see it unless you looked closely. There was something noble in the way in which he carried his dark head. Somebody, perhaps it was Norah, had told me that one of his ancestors had been a great lord, back in the days when the lords were crusaders, and I liked to think of Burton Raymond in chain armor killing people, recklessly. Little Dick and I used to act it out sometimes in the dark end of the hall. We killed a number of things there, Saracens, and lions, and tigers, and the rocking-horse, and little Trixie, and would come in quite breathless afterwards to the sitting room where the family sat in the lamplight. Sometimes we found them talking about Burton Raymond.
"Every time that I walk down our block I seem to meet Burton Raymond," my father grumbled, one evening. "It's getting to be a nuisance. Especially since May has been visiting here," he added, after a serious moment's pause.
"He passed the house fifteen times to-day," my mother said, quietly.
She said it with a blush, and then, suddenly, she made an impulsive dive at my father's hand and squeezed it.
"We were young ourselves once!" she cried.
"The lad hasn't a cent to bless himself with," grandmother demurred.
"But he has genius!" my mother cried again. "There is a great future opening before him. And when we were married we had very little, Robert. There was just one small twenty-five cent piece left after the wedding trip. Do you remember, Robert? And you spent it in flowers—for me! They were roses. I have some of them dried yet."