He entered her conceit. "There's a lot of difference among them, though, don't you think?" He bent over with her to look closely. "The blue ones don't look like they were blue at all; but that dark lady down there, for instance, she hasn't enjoyed her dinner. Perhaps last night she had an overdose of dew."
"I'm afraid the expression is chronic," Hertha answered gravely.
They wandered on where bushes of spirea grew on either side the path—"Bridal wreath, don't they call it?" Dick asked timidly—on among the tall hickory and chestnut trees; then up the hill to the rose garden, the green buds of the newly trimmed plants beginning to show touches of color, and down again to the little valley where the mischievous bronze baby, standing in the water surrounded by his guard of spouting turtles, clutches a duck that pours out a constant stream of sparkling drops into the pool below.
"How does any one think of such things?" Dick asked gazing with admiration at the miniature fountain.
"It seems to me easy enough to think of them," Hertha answered. "But how does any one make them?"
The sun was low as with reluctant feet they turned homeward. Dick had been quiet, in touch with the beauty about him, the right companion for a dreamlike afternoon. But the springtime had its present call to him, and as they neared the end of their walk he could not forego a word.
They had come upon a sunny strip of path and Hertha, slipping off her coat, threw it over her arm.
Dick took it from her. "Let me carry it, dear," he said.
It was the first time he had dared thus to speak to her, and his breath came quick.
Awakening to find her dream was over, Hertha drew away from him.