"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?"

"I should say there was a _little_ more dew than usual. Stand up and let
me survey you, if perchance I may discover the cause."

Ivy rose, made a profound curtsy, and then turned slowly around, after
the manner of the revolving fashion-figures in a milliner's window.