A merry laugh greeted her.
"Oh, you good-for-nothing!" cried the good-natured old housekeeper, "you'll never die in your bed."
"Not for a good while, I hope," answered Mr. Clerron.
Then he made Ivy sit down by him, and took from the great basket the finest cluster of grapes.
"Is that reward enough for coming?"
"Coming into so beautiful a place as this is like what you read yesterday about poetry to Coleridge, 'its own exceeding great reward.'"
"And you don't want the grapes?"
"I don't know that I have any intrinsic objection to them as a free gift. It was only the principle that I opposed."
"Very well, we will go shares, then. You may have half for the free gift, and I will have half for the principle. Little tendril, you look as fresh as the morning."
"Don't I always?"