stretching eerily towards the blackboard on which he had been drawing a picture of a locomotive when Aunt Verona startled him with the strange word: "labyrinth."
That was life—a labyrinth, a never-ending spiral.
The rooms had been redecorated and Paul had begun to distribute the best pieces of Aunt Verona's furniture. Some had been removed to the woodshed whence they were to be transported to auction rooms in Bridgetown. On his way upstairs, he paused to rummage in drawers which had thus far escaped attention. In one he came on a lacquer box which seemed familiar, although he could not place it among his possessions. It was locked, and there was no key. Curiosity prompted him to force back the cover.
His eyes fell on a humble bunch of dried flowers: daisies, clovers, buttercups. He was puzzled A faint odour of coco-nut cookies gently assailed him and vanished. Then he remembered.
He closed the lid of the box and replaced it in the drawer. The girl of seven who had unconsciously set his emotions a-twitter for the first time and then succumbed to her dear little greediness had actually been the elder sister of the conspicuously ladylike young woman to whom he had bowed this very evening in the town hall. Perhaps, one day, he would bring Phœbe to his house to show her the box; its story could not fail to touch her.
As he undressed, the phrases of the speechmaker kept recurring. "A high duty to perform," "A sacred privilege to exercise," "An opportunity to devote oneself to a great cause."
What great cause? The cause of the herd that had made existence so difficult, against whose exquisite forms of oppression one had had the perseverance and ingenuity to render oneself proof? Not at all; it was the great cause, pardi! Nobody knew wherein the greatness lay;
