Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/103

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A-MAYING
87

beautiful name. Do you know what it means?"

Kirk did not.

"It means happiness. Is it so?"

"Yes," said Kirk; "Ken and I couldn't be happy without her. She is happiness."

"Kenneth is your brother?"

"Kenelm. Does that mean something?"

The old gentleman plucked May-flowers for a moment. "It means, if I remember rightly, 'a defender of his kindred." It is a good Anglo-Saxon name."

"What does my name mean?" Kirk asked.

The Maestro laughed. "Yours is not a given name," he said. "It has no meaning. But—you mean much to me."

He caught Kirk suddenly in a breathless embrace, from which he released him almost at once, with an apology.

"Let us make the wreath," he said. "See, I'll show you how."

He bound the first strands, and then guided Kirk's hands in the next steps, till the child was fashioning the wreath alone.

" 'My love's an arbutus
On the borders of Lene,'"