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224 secret admiration; Merlin, out of Tennyson’s Idyls, and King Cophetua, with Florimel as the Beggar Maid.

“It’s perfectly scrumptious of you, Guardian!” said Jane. “We never dreamed we could get you into it—and four times! It must be all those plants you work over springing up in you and making you blossom out!”

“A botanist ought to enjoy transformations, an elderly man ought to be glad to be rejuvenated, and we are all secretly inclined to the drama, my dear,” Mr. Moulton answered her. “This notion of Lynette’s strikes my fancy; I leaped to the bait of one night’s youthfulness; that’s all.”

“Nothing to apologize for, Mr. Moulton,” said Mary. “You are to have four rôles, then, and Mark four—Galahad, Alexander Hamilton—we think Mark looks a little like him—Clive Newcome, Kim. And Win will be Mark Antony—I don’t see how anybody can be sure which Roman he is, when togas were so fashionable!—Robin Hood, The Last of the Mohicans, L’Aiglon—in a gorgeous satin costume!—and Oliver Goldsmith. If only you three could be in as many places at once as you can take parts we’d seem to have an army of men! That short Dal-