“Oh, you wanted to know about wild roses when they were at home,” coming out of his dream. What a dainty conceit it was! And he could see the pretty rose nook now; yes, it was a summer parlor. “Well, they grow about country ways. I’ve found them in the woods, by the streams, by the roadsides, sometimes in great clumps. And where I have been staying, – in the village of Chester, – a long distance from here, they grew in abundance. At the edge of a wood there was a rose thicket. The great, tall ones that meet over your head, and the low-growing bushy ones. Why, you could gather them by the hundreds! Have you ever been to the country?” he asked suddenly.

“We’ve been to Cent’l Park,” answered Dil proudly.

“Well, that’s the country in its Sunday clothes, dressed up for a company reception. The real country lives in every-day clothes, and gets weedy and dusty, with roads full of ruts. But you can walk on the grass; it grows all along the roadsides. Then there are flowers, – or weeds in bloom; it amounts to the same thing, – and no one scolds if you pick them. You can lie out under the trees, and the birds come and sing to you, and the squirrels run about. The air is sweet as if it rained cologne every night. Under-brush and wild blackberries reach out and shake hands with you; butterflies go floating in the sunshine; crickets sit on the stones and chirp; bees go droning by, laden with honey; and a great robin will stop and wink at you.”

The children’s faces were not only a study, but a revelation. John Travis thought he had never seen anything so wonderful. If a man could put such life in every feature, such exquisite bewilderment!

“What is a robin?” asked Bess, her face all alight with eagerness.

“A great saucy bird with black eyes and a red breast. And there is a bobolink, who flies around announcing his own name, and a tiny bird that says, ‘Phebe, Phebe;’ for in the country the birds can talk.”

Both children sighed; their hearts were full to overflowing. What heavenly content!

“This particular spot,” and John Travis’s eyes seemed to look way off and soften mysteriously, “is at the edge of a wood. The road runs so,” marking it out on his trousers with his finger, “way up over a sloping hill, and this one goes down to a little stream. In this angle – ”

Neither of them had the slightest idea of an angle, but it did not disturb their delight.

“In this angle there are some alders and stuff, and a curious little entrance to the rose thicket. Every kind seems in a riotous tangle. The low ones that begin to bloom in June, palest pink, rose-pink, and their dainty slim buds the most delicious color imaginable. There’s a small cleared space; that’s the parlor, with a velvety green carpet. The bushes meet overhead, and shower their soft leaves down over you. Every day hundreds of them bloom. It looks like a fairy cave. And lying down on the grass you can look up to one patch of blue sky. And I think the roses must have souls that go up to heaven – they are so sweet.”

He paused in his random talk, with his eyes fixed on Dil. The rapt expression of her face transfigured her. Any one could imagine Bess being beautiful under certain healthful conditions, but Dil gave no promise to the casual glance. John Travis discerned at that moment the gift and charm higher than mere beauty, born of the soul, and visible only when the soul is deeply moved.

Her hat was pushed a little back. There was a fringe of red-brown hair with a peculiar glint, softened by the summer heat into rings. A low, broad forehead, a straight line of bronze brown, shading off in a delicate curve and fineness at the temple. But her eyes were like the gems in brown quartz, that have a prisoned gleam of sunshine in them, visible only in certain lights. Ordinarily they were rather dull; at times full of obstinate repression. Now they were illuminated with the sunrise glow. A small Irish nose, that had an amusing fashion of wrinkling up, and over which went a tiny procession of freckles. A wide mouth, redeemed by a beautifully curved upper lip, and a rather square chin that destroyed the oval.

“Hillo!” as if coming out of a dream. “See here, I’d like to sketch you – would you mind?”

He had dreamed over a picture he was to paint of that enchanted spot, a picture of happy youth and love and hope, “In Wild-Rose Time.” But the dream was dead, the inspiration ended. He could never paint that picture, and yet so much of his best efforts had gone to the making of it! What if he arose from the ruin, and put this child in it, with her marvellous eyes, her ignorant, innocent trust, her apron full of wild roses, emerging from the shadowy hollow, and one branch caught in her hair, half crowning her.

For why should a man wreck his life on the shallows and quicksands of a woman’s love? Two days ago he had said he could not paint again in years, if ever, that all his genius had been the soft glamour of a woman’s smile. And here was a fresh inspiration.

Dil stared, yet the happy light did not go out of her face as she tried to grasp the mystery.

“Yes; would you mind my sketching you for a picture?”

There were not many people around. Saturday afternoons they went off on excursions. A few drowsy old fellows of the better class, two women resting and reading, waiting for some one perhaps, others sauntering.

“Oh, if you’d make a picture of Bess! She’s so much prittier, an’ her hair’s like gold. Oh, do!” and Dil’s breath came with an entreating gasp, while her face was beseeching love.

“Yes; I’ll make a picture of Bess too, if you can stay long enough,” he answered good humoredly.

“We can stay till dark, ’f we like. Summer nights ain’t never lonesome. An’ Sat’day’s full of folks.”

Travis laughed. “All right. Push your hat up higher – so. No, let your hair stay tumbled.”

“It isn’t pritty hair. They used to call me red-top, an’ names. ’Tain’t so red as it was.”

She ran her fingers through it, and gave her head a shake.

“Capital.” He had just drawn out his sketch-book, when the policeman came down with a solemn tread and authoritative countenance. But Travis nodded, and gave him an assuring smile that all was right.

“Let me see; I think I’ll tell you about an old apple orchard I know. You never saw one in bloom?”

“Oh, do apples have flowers?” cried Bess. “There’s never any such in the stores. What a wonderful thing country must be!”

“The blossom comes first, then the fruit.” Then he began with the fascinating preface: “When I was a little boy I had been ill a long while with scarlet fever. It was the middle of May when I was taken to the country.”

What a wonderful romance he made of bloom and bird music, of chickens and cows, of lambs, of the little colt that ran in the orchard, so very shy at first, and then growing so tame that the little lad took him for a playfellow. Very simple indeed, but he held his small audience entranced. The delight in Bess’s face seemed to bring fine and tender expressions to that of Dil. Her nose wrinkled piquantly, her lips fell into beguiling curves. Travis found himself speculating upon the capacity of the face under the influence of cultivation, education, and happiness. He really hated to leave off, there were so many inspiring possibilities.

Now and then some one gave them a sidelong glance of wonder; but Travis went on in a steady, business-like manner; and the guardian of the square shielded them from undue curiosity.

“Bess isn’t well,” he said presently. “She looks like a little ghost.”

“She was hurted a long while ago and she can’t walk. Her little legs is just like a baby’s, an’ they never grow any more. But she won’t grow either, and I don’t so much mind so long as I can carry her.”

“Will she never walk again?” he asked in surprise. “How old is she?”

“She’s ten; but she’s littler than the boys now, so she’s the baby – the sweetest baby of thim all.”

Ah, what a wealth of love spoke in the tone, in the simple words.

“I think you may take off Bess’s cap,” he said, with an unconsciously tender manner. Poor little girl! And yet it could not be for very long. He noted the lines made by suffering, and his heart went out in sympathy.

“Now, if there is anything you would like to ask me – anything that puzzles you” – and he reflected that most things might seem mysteries to their untrained brains.

They glanced at each other and drew long breaths, as if this was the golden opportunity they had long waited for. Then an irresistibly shy, sweet, beseeching expression crossed Bess’s face, as her eyes wandered from him to her sister.

“O Dil – you might ast him ’bout – you know” – hesitating with pitiful eagerness in her large eyes – “’bout goin’ to heaven, an’ how far it is.”

“Do you know where heaven is, mister?”

The question was asked with the good faith of utter ignorance; but there was an intense and puzzled anxiety in every line of the child’s countenance.

“Heaven!” He was struck with a strange mental helplessness. “Heaven!” he repeated.

“Don’t anybody know for true?” A despair quenched the sunshine in the brown eyes and made outer darkness.

“An’ how they get there?” continued Bess breathlessly. “That’s what we wanter know, ’cause Dil wants to go an’ take me. Is it very, very far?”

Travis glanced at Dil. Never in his life had he been more at loss. There was a line between her brows, and the wrinkled nose added to the weight of thoughtfulness. Never had he seen a few wrinkles express so much.

She felt as if he was questioning her.

“I went to the Mission School, you see,” she began to explain. “The teacher read about a woman who took her children an’ a girl who lived with her, an’ started for heaven. Then Owny took my shoes, ’cause ’twas wet an’ slushy ’n’ I couldn’t go, an’ so I didn’t hear if they got there. ’N’ when I went again, that teacher had gone away. I didn’t like the new wan. When I ast her she said it was a gory somethin’, an’ you didn’t go that way to heaven now.”

“An allegory, yes.”

“Then, what’s that?”

“A story of something that may happen, like every-day events.” Ah, how could he meet the comprehension of these innocent children?

“Well, did she get there?” with eager haste.

The sparrows went on with their cheerful, rather aggressive chirp. The fountain played, people passed to and fro, and wagons rumbled; but it seemed to John Travis as if there were only themselves in the wide world – and God. He did not understand God, but he knew then there was some supreme power above man.

“Yes,” with reverent gentleness, “yes, she found heaven.”

“Then, what’s to hinder us, Dil? ’Twouldn’t be any use to ast mother – she’d rather go to Cunny Island or Mis’ MacBride’s. If you only would tell us the way – ”

“Yes; if you could tell us the way,” said Dil wistfully, raising her entreating eyes.

Could he direct any one on the road to heaven? And then he admitted to himself that he had cast away the faint clew of years agone, and would not know what step to take first.

“You see,” explained Dil hurriedly, “I thought when we’d found just how to go, I’d take Bess some Sunday mornin’, an’ we’d go up by Cent’l Park and over by the river, ’cause they useter sing ‘One more river to cross.’ Then we’d get on a ferry-boat. Mother wouldn’t care much. She don’t care for Bess since she’s hurted, and won’t never be no good. But I could take care of her; an’ when we struck the right way, ’twould be just goin’ straight along. I could scrub an’ ’tend babies an’ sweep an’ earn some money. People was good to the woman in the story, an’ mebbe they’d be good to us when we were on the road an’ no mistake. If we could just get started.”

Oh, the eager, appealing desire in her face, the faith and fervor in her voice! A poor little pilgrim, not even knowing what the City of Destruction meant, longing with all her soul to set out for that better country, and take her poor little crippled sister. It moved him beyond anything he had ever known, and blurred the sunshine with a tremulous mistiness.

Dil was watching the varying expressions.

“O mister, ain’t there any heaven? Will we have to go on living in Barker’s Court forever ’n’ ever?”

The despair in Dil’s voice was heartrending. John Travis thought he had passed one hour of crucial anguish; but it was as nothing to this, inasmuch as the pang of the soul must exceed the purely physical pain. He drew a long, quivering breath.

“Oh, there ain’t any!”

He was on the witness stand. To destroy their hope would be a crueler murder than that of the innocents. No, he dared not deny God.