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“I’ve a bed of breeders that will be worth looking at next time you come home,” said he.

Leena walked far over the pastures with Peter Paul. She was very fond of him, and she had a woman’s perception that they would miss him more than he could miss them.

“I am very sorry you could not settle down with us,” she said, and her eyes brimmed over.

Peter Paul kissed the tears tenderly from her cheeks.

“Perhaps I shall when I am older, and have shaken off a few more of my whims into the sea. I’ll come back yet, Leena, and live very near to you and grow tulips, and be as good an old bachelor-uncle to your boy as Uncle Jacob was to me.”

“And if a foreign wife would suit you better than one of the Schmidts,” said Leena, re-arranging his bundle for him, “don’t think we sha’n’t like her. Any one you love will be welcome to us, Peter Paul–as welcome as you have been.”

When they got to the hillock where Mother used to sit, Peter Paul took her once more into his arms.

“Good-bye, good Sister,” he said. “I have been back in my childhood again, and God knows that is both pleasant and good for one.”

“And it is funny that you should say so,” said Leena, smiling through her tears; “for when we were children you were never happy except in thinking of when you should be a man.”

“And there sit your children, just where we used to play,” said Peter Paul.

“They are blowing dandelion clocks,” said Leena, and she called them.

“Come and bid Uncle Peter good-bye.”

He kissed them both.

“Well, what o’clock is it?” said he. The boy gave one mighty puff and dispersed his fairy clock at a breath.

“One o’clock,” he cried stoutly.

“One, two, three, four o’clock,” said the girl. And they went back to their play.

And Leena stood by them, with Mother’s old sun-hat on her young head, and watched Peter Paul’s figure over the flat pastures till it was an indistinguishable speck.

He turned back a dozen times to wave his hands to her, and to the children telling the fairy time.

But he did not ask now why dandelion clocks go differently with different people. Godfather Time had told him. He teaches us many things.