Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/25

Rh the queen was waiting for him in the toppest gar—" "Don't you tell me they were so domestic and all," Felicia objected. "They probably—"

"Who's seeing this story?" Ken retorted. "You let me be. I say, the queen was waiting for him, and she gave him a lotus and a ripe pomegranate, and the slaves ran and got wine, and the people with harps played them, and she said— Here's Mother!"

Kirk looked quite taken aback for a moment at this apparently irrelevant remark of the Babylonian queen, till a faint rustle at the doorway told him that it was his own mother who had come in.

She stood at the door, a slight, tired little person, dressed in one of the black gowns she had worn ever since the children's father had died.

"Don't stop, Ken," she smiled. "What did she say?"

But either invention flagged, or self-consciousness intervened, for Kenelm said:

"Blessed if I know what she did say! But at any rate, you'll agree that it was quite a garden, Kirky. I'll also bet a hat that you