It is long since that Leith Clay-Randolph (note the hyphenated surname) knocked at the back door of Idlewild and melted the heart of Gunda.  Now Gunda was cold as her Norway hills, though in her least frigid moods she was capable of permitting especially nice-looking tramps to sit on the back stoop and devour lone crusts and forlorn and forsaken chops.  But that a tatterdemalion out of the night should invade the sanctity of her kitchen-kingdom and delay dinner while she set a place for him in the warmest corner, was a matter of such moment that the Sunflower went to see.  Ah, the Sunflower, of the soft heart and swift sympathy!  Leith Clay-Randolph threw his glamour over her for fifteen long minutes, whilst I brooded with my cigar, and then she fluttered back with vague words and the suggestion of a cast-off suit I would never miss.

“Surely I shall never miss it,” I said, and I had in mind the dark gray suit with the pockets draggled from the freightage of many books—­books that had spoiled more than one day’s fishing sport.

“I should advise you, however,” I added, “to mend the pockets first.”

But the Sunflower’s face clouded.  “N—­o,” she said, “the black one.”

“The black one!” This explosively, incredulously.  “I wear it quite often.  I—­I intended wearing it to-night.”

“You have two better ones, and you know I never liked it, dear,” the Sunflower hurried on.  “Besides, it’s shiny—­”

“Shiny!”

“It—­it soon will be, which is just the same, and the man is really estimable.  He is nice and refined, and I am sure he—­”

“Has seen better days.”

“Yes, and the weather is raw and beastly, and his clothes are threadbare.  And you have many suits—­”

“Five,” I corrected, “counting in the dark gray fishing outfit with the draggled pockets.”

“And he has none, no home, nothing—­”

“Not even a Sunflower,”—­putting my arm around her,—­“wherefore he is deserving of all things.  Give him the black suit, dear—­nay, the best one, the very best one.  Under high heaven for such lack there must be compensation!”

“You are a dear!” And the Sunflower moved to the door and looked back alluringly.  “You are a perfect dear.”

And this after seven years, I marvelled, till she was back again, timid and apologetic.

“I—­I gave him one of your white shirts.  He wore a cheap horrid cotton thing, and I knew it would look ridiculous.  And then his shoes were so slipshod, I let him have a pair of yours, the old ones with the narrow caps—­”

“Old ones!”

“Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did.”

It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things.

And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream.  Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet.  Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico.  And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called “The Road.”