MISSY

By Dana Gatlin

TO VIOLA ROSEBORO

Contents

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER I. THE FLAME DIVINE

Melissa came home from Sunday-school with a feeling she had never had before. To be sure she was frequently discovering, these days, feelings she had never had before. That was the marvellous reward of having grown to be so old; she was ten, now, an advanced age—almost grown up! She could look back, across the eons which separated her from seven-years-old, and dimly re-vision, as a stranger, the little girl who cried her first day in the Primary Grade. How absurd seemed that bashful, timid, ignorant little silly! She knew nothing at all. She still thought there was a Santa Claus!—would you believe that? And, even at eight, she had lingering fancies of fairies dancing on the flower-beds by moonlight, and talking in some mysterious language with the flowers!

Now she was much wiser. She knew that fairies lived only in books and pictures; that flowers could not actually converse. Well... she almost knew. Sometimes, when she was all alone—out in the summerhouse on a drowsy afternoon, or in the glimmering twilight when that one very bright and knowing star peered in at her, solitary, on the side porch, or when, later, the moonshine stole through the window and onto her pillow, so thick and white she could almost feel it with her fingers—at such times vague fancies would get tangled up with the facts of reality, and disturb her new, assured sense of wisdom. Suddenly she'd find herself all mixed up, confused as to what actually was and wasn't.

But she never worried long over that. Life was too complex to permit much time for worry over anything; too full and compelling in every minute of the long, long hours which yet seemed not long enough to hold the new experiences and emotions which ceaselessly flooded in upon her.

The emotion she felt this Sunday was utterly new. It was not contentment nor enjoyment merely, nor just happiness. For, in the morning as mother dressed her in her embroidered white “best” dress, and as she walked through the June sunshine to the Presbyterian church, trying to remember not to skip, she had been quite happy. And she had still felt happy during the Sunday-school lesson, while Miss Simpson explained how our Lord multiplied the loaves and fishes so as to feed the multitude. How wonderful it must have been to be alive when our Lord walked and talked among men!

Her feeling of peaceful contentment intensified a little when they all stood up to sing,

“Let me be a little sunbeam for Jesus—” and she seemed, then, to feel a subtle sort of glow, as from an actual sunbeam, warming her whole being.

But the marvellous new feeling did not definitely begin till after Sunday-school was over, when she was helping Miss Simpson collect the song-books. Not the big, thick hymn-books used for the church service, but smaller ones, with pasteboard backs and different tunes. Melissa would have preferred the Sunday-school to use the big, cloth-covered hymnals. Somehow they looked more religious; just as their tunes, with slow, long-drawn cadences, somehow sounded more religious than the Sunday-school's cheerful tunes. Why this should be so Melissa didn't know; there were many things she didn't yet understand about religion. But she asked no questions; experience had taught her that the most serious questions may be strangely turned into food for laughter by grown-ups.

It was when she carried the song-books into the choir-room to stack them on some chairs, that she noticed the choir had come in and was beginning to practise a real hymn. She loitered. It was an especially religious hymn, very slow and mournful. They sang:

“A-a—sle-e-e-ep in Je-e-e—sus—Ble-e-es—ed sle-e-e-ep—From which none e-e-ev—er Wake to we-e-e-ep—”

The choir did not observe Melissa; did not suspect that state of deliciousness which, starting from the skin, slowly crept into her very soul. She stood there, very unobtrusive, drinking in the sadly sweet sounds. Up on the stained-glass window the sunlight filtered through blue-and-red-and-golden angels, sending shafts of heavenly colour across the floor; and the fibres of her soul, enmeshed in music, seemed to stretch out to mingle with that heavenly colour. It was hard to separate herself from that sound and colour which was not herself. Tears came to her eyes; she couldn't tell why, for she wasn't sad. Oh, if she could stand there listening forever!—could feel like this forever!

The choir was practising for a funeral that afternoon, but Melissa didn't know that. She had never attended a funeral. She didn't even know it was a funeral song. She only knew that when, at last, they stopped singing and filed out of the choir-room, she could hardly bear to have them go. She wished she might follow them, might tuck herself away in the auditorium somewhere and stay for the church service. But her mother didn't allow her to do that. Mother insisted that church service and Sunday-school, combined, were too much for a little girl, and would give her headaches.

So there was nothing for Missy to do but go home. The sun shone just as brightly as on her hither journey but now she had no impulse to skip. She walked along sedately, in rhythm to inner, long-drawn cadences. The cadences permeated her—were herself. She was sad, yet pleasantly, thrillingly so. It was divine. When she reached home, she went into the empty front-parlour and hunted out the big, cloth-covered hymnal that was there. She found “Asleep in Jesus” and played it over and over on the piano. The bass was a trifle difficult, but that didn't matter. Then she found other hymns which were in accord with her mood: “Abide with Me”; “Nearer My God to Thee”; “One Sweetly Solemn Thought.” The last was sublimely beautiful; it almost stole her favour away from “Asleep in Jesus.” Not quite, though.

She was re-playing her first favourite when the folks all came in from church. There were father and mother, grandpa and grandma Merriam who lived in the south part of town, Aunt Nettie, and Cousin Pete Merriam. Cousin Pete's mother was dead and his father out in California on a long business trip, so he was spending that summer in Cherryvale with his grandparents.

Melissa admired Cousin Pete very much, for he was big and handsome and wore more stylish-looking clothes than did most of the young men in Cherryvale. Also, he was very old—nineteen, and a sophomore at the State University. Very old. Naturally he was much wiser than Missy, for all her acquired wisdom. She stood in awe of him. He had a way of asking her absurd, foolish questions about things that everybody knew; and when, to be polite, she had to answer him seriously in his own foolish vein, he would laugh at her! So, though she admired him, she always had an impulse to run away from him. She would have liked, now, in this heavenly, religious mood, to run away lest he might ask her embarrassing questions about it. But, before she had the chance, grandpa said:

“Why Missy, playing hymns? You'll be church organist before we know it!”

Missy blushed.

“'Asleep in Jesus' is my favourite, I think,” commented grandma. “It's the one I'd like sung over me at the last. Play it again, dear.”

But Pete had picked up a sheet of music from the top of the piano.

“Let's have this, Missy.” He turned to his grandmother. “Ought to hear her do this rag—I've been teaching her double-bass.”

Missy shrank back as he placed the rag-time on the music-rest.

“Oh, I'd rather not—to-day.”

Pete smiled down at her—his amiable but condescending smile.

“What's the matter with to-day?” he asked.

Missy blushed again.

“Oh, I don't know—I just don't feel that way, I guess.”

“Don't feel that way?” repeated Pete. “You're temperamental, are you? How do you feel, Missy?”

Missy feared she was letting herself in for embarrassment; but this was a holy subject. So she made herself answer:

“I guess I feel religious.”

Pete shouted. “She feels religious! That's a good one! She guesses she—”

“Peter, you should be ashamed of yourself!” reproved his grandmother.

“She's a scream!” he insisted. “Religious! That kid!”

“Well,” defended Missy, timid and puzzled, but wounded to unwonted bravery, “isn't it proper to feel like that on the Sabbath?”

Pete shouted again.

“Peter—stop that! You should be ashamed of yourself!” It was his grandfather this time. Grandpa moved over to the piano and removed the rag-time from off the hymnal, pausing to pat Missy on the head.

But Peter was not the age to be easily squelched.

“What does it feel like, Missy—the religious feeling?”

Missy, her eyes bright behind their blur, didn't answer. Indeed, she could not have defined that sweetly sad glow, now so cruelly crushed, even had she wanted to.

Missy didn't enjoy her dinner as much as she usually did the midday Sunday feasts when grandpa and grandma came to eat with them. She felt embarrassed and shy. Of course she had to answer when asked why she wasn't eating her drumstick, and whether the green apples in grandma's orchard had given her an “upset,” and other direct questions; but when she could, she kept silent. She was glad Pete didn't talk to her much. Yet, now and then, she caught his eyes upon her in a look of sardonic enquiry, and quickly averted her own.

Her unhappiness lasted till the visitors had departed. Then, after aimlessly wandering about, she took her Holy Bible out to the summerhouse. She was contemplating a surprise for grandpa and grandma. Next week mother and Aunt Nettie were going over to Aunt Anna's in Junction City for a few days; during their absence Missy was to stay with her grandparents. And to surprise them, she was learning by heart a whole Psalm.

She planned to spring it upon them the first night at family prayers. At grandma's they had prayers every night before going to bed. First grandpa read a long chapter out of the Holy Bible, then they all knelt down, grandpa beside his big Morris chair, grandma beside her little willow rocker, and whoever else was present beside whatever chair he'd been sitting in. Grandpa prayed a long prayer; grandma a shorter one; then, if any of the grandchildren were there, they must say a verse by heart. Missy's first verse had been, “Jesus wept.” But she was just a tiny thing then. When she grew bigger, she repeated, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me.” Later she accomplished the more showy, “In My Father's house are many mansions; I go there to prepare a place for you.”

But this would be her first whole Psalm. She pictured every one's delighted and admiring surprise. After much deliberation she had decided upon the Psalm in which David sings his song of faith, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

How beautiful it was! So deep and so hard to understand, yet, somehow, all the more beautiful for that. She murmured aloud, “I will fear no evil—for Thou art with me—Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me”; and wondered what the rod and staff really were.

But best of all she liked the last verse:

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

To dwell in the house of the Lord forever!—How wonderful! What was the house of the Lord?... Missy leaned back in the summerhouse seat, and gazed dreamily out at the silver-white clouds drifting lazily across the sky; in the side-yard her nasturtium bed glowed up from the slick green grass like a mass of flame; a breeze stirred the flame to gentle motion and touched the ramblers on the summerhouse, shaking out delicious scents; distantly from the backyard came the tranquil, drowsy sounds of unseen chickens. Missy listened to the chickens; regarded sky and flowers and green—colours so lovely as to almost hurt you—and sniffed the fragrant air... All this must be the house of the Lord! Here, surely goodness and mercy would follow her all the days of her life.

Thus, slowly, the marvellous new feeling stole back and took possession of her. She could no longer bear just sitting there quiet, just feeling. She craved some sort of expression. So she rose and moved slowly over the slick green grass, pausing by the blazing nasturtium bed to pick a few vivid blossoms. These she pinned to her dress; then went very leisurely on to the house-to the parlour—to the piano—to “Asleep in Jesus.”

She played it “with expression.” Her soul now seemed to be flowing out through her fingers and to the keyboard; the music came not from the keyboard, really, but from her soul. Rapture!

But presently her mood was rudely interrupted by mother's voice at the door.

“Missy, Aunt Nettie's lying down with a headache. I'm afraid the piano disturbs her.”

“All right, mother.”

Lingeringly Missy closed the hymnal. She couldn't forbear a little sigh. Perhaps mother noted the sigh. Anyway, she came close and said:

“I'm sorry, dear. I think it's nice the way you've learned to play hymns.”

Missy glanced up; and for a moment forgetting that grown-ups don't always understand, she breathed:

“Oh, mother, it's HEAVENLY! You can't imagine—”

She remembered just in time, and stopped short. But mother didn't embarrass her by asking her to explain something that couldn't be explained in words. She only laid her hand, for a second, on the sleek brown head. The marvellous feeling endured through the afternoon, and through supper, and through the evening—clear up to the time Missy undressed and said her prayers. Some special sweetness seemed to have crept into saying prayers; our Lord Jesus seemed very personal and very close as she whispered to Him a postlude:

“I will fear no evil, for Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I'll dwell in Thy house forever, O Lord—Amen.”

For a time she lay open-eyed in her little white bed. A flood of moonlight came through the window to her pillow. She felt that it was a shining benediction from our Lord Himself. And indeed it may have been. Gradually her eyes closed. She smiled as she slept.

The grace of God continued to be there when she awoke. It seemed an unusual morning. The sun was brighter than on ordinary mornings; the birds outside were twittering more loudly; even the lawnmower which black Jeff was already rolling over the grass had assumed a peculiarly agreeable clatter. And though, at breakfast, father grumbled at his eggs being overdone, and though mother complained that the laundress hadn't come, and though Aunt Nettie's head was still aching, all these things, somehow, seemed trivial and of no importance.

Missy could scarcely wait to get her dusting and other little “chores” done, so that she might go to the piano.

However, she hadn't got half-way through “One Sweetly Solemn Thought” before her mother appeared.

“Missy! what in the world do you mean? I've told you often enough you must finish your practising before strumming at other things.”

Strumming!

But Missy said nothing in defence. She only hung her head. Her mother went on:

“Now, I don't want to speak to you again about this. Get right to your exercises—I hope I won't have to hide that hymn-book!”

Mother's voice was stern. The laundress's defection and other domestic worries may have had something to do with it. But Missy couldn't consider that; she was too crushed. In stricken silence she attacked the “exercises.”

Not once during that day had she a chance to let out, through music, any of her surcharged devotionalism. Mother kept piling on her one errand after another. Mother was in an unwonted flurry; for the next day was the one she and Aunt Nettie were going to Junction City and there were, as she put it, “a hundred and one things to do.”

Through all those tribulations Missy reminded herself of “Thy rod and Thy staff.” She didn't yet know just what these aids to comfort were; but the Psalmist had said of them, “they shall comfort me.” And, somehow, she did find comfort. That is what Faith does.

And that night, after she had said her prayers and got into bed, once more the grace of God rode in on the moonlight to rest upon her pillow.

But the next afternoon, when she had to kiss mother good-bye, a great tide of loneliness rushed over Missy, and all but engulfed her. She had always known she loved mother tremendously, but till that moment she had forgotten how very much. She had to concentrate hard upon “Thy rod and Thy staff” before she was able to blink back her tears. And mother, noticing the act, commented on her little daughter's bravery, and blinked back some tears of her own.

In the excitement of packing up to go to grandma's house, Missy to a degree forgot her grief. She loved to go to grandma's house. She liked everything about that house: the tall lilac hedge that separated the yard from the Curriers' yard next door; the orchard out in back where grew the apples which sometimes gave her an “upset”; the garden where grandpa spent hours and hours “cultivating” his vegetables; and grandma's own particular garden, which was given over to tall gaudy hollyhocks, and prim rows of verbena, snap-dragon, phlox, spicy pinks, heliotrope, and other flowers such as all grandmothers ought to have.

And she liked the house itself, with its many unusual and delightful appurtenances: no piano—an organ in the parlour, the treadles of which you must remember to keep pumping, or the music would wheeze and stop; the “what-not” in the corner, its shelves filled with fascinating curios—shells of all kinds, especially a big conch shell which, held close to the ear, still sang a song of the sea; the marble-topped centre-table, and on it the interesting “album” of family photographs, and the mysterious contrivance which made so lifelike the double “views” you placed in the holder; and the lamp with its shade dripping crystal bangles, like huge raindrops off an umbrella; and the crocheted “tidies” on all the rocking-chairs, and the carpet-covered footstools sitting demurely round on the floor, and the fringed lambrequin on the mantel, and the enormous fan of peacock feathers spreading out on the wall—oh, yes, grandma's was a fascinating place!

Then besides, of course, she adored grandpa and grandma. They were charming and unlike other people, and very, very good. Grandpa was slow-moving, and tall and broad—even taller and broader than father; and he must be terribly wise because he was Justice-of-the-Peace, and because he didn't talk much. Other children thought him a person to be feared somewhat, but Missy liked to tuck her hand in his enormous one and talk to him about strange, mysterious things.

Grandma wasn't nearly so big—indeed she wasn't much taller than Missy herself; and she was proud of her activity—her “spryness,” she called it. She boasted of her ability to stoop over and, without bending her knees, to lay both palms flat on the floor. Even Missy's mother couldn't do that, and sometimes she seemed to grow a little tired of being reminded of it. Grandma liked to talk as much as grandpa liked to keep silent; and always, to the running accompaniment of her tongue, she kept her hands busied, whether “puttering about” in her house or flower-garden, or crocheting “tidies,” or knitting little mittens, or creating the multi-coloured paper-flowers which helped make her house so alluring.

That night for supper they had beefsteak and hot biscuits and custard pie; and grandma let her eat these delicacies which were forbidden at home. She even let her drink coffee! Not that Missy cared especially for coffee—it had a bitter taste; but drinking it made her feel grown-up. She always felt more grown-up at grandma's than at home. She was “company,” and they showed her a consideration one never receives at home.

After supper Cousin Pete went out somewhere, and the other three had a long, pleasant evening. Another agreeable feature about staying at grandma's was that they didn't make such a point of her going to bed early. The three of them sat out on the porch till the night came stealing up; it covered the street and the yard with darkness, crawled into the tree tops and the rose-bushes and the lilac-hedge. It hid all the familiar objects of daytime, except the street-lamp at the corner and certain windows of the neighbours' houses, which now showed square and yellow. Of the people on the porch next door, and of those passing in the street, only the voices remained; and, sometimes, a glowing point of red which was a cigar.

Presently the moon crept up from behind the Jones's house, peeping stealthily, as if to make sure that all was right in Cherryvale. And then everything became visible again, but in a magically beautiful way; it was now like a picture from a fairy-tale. Indeed, this was the hour when your belief in fairies was most apt to return to you.

The locusts began to sing. They sang loudly. And grandma kept up her chatter. But within Missy everything seemed to become very quiet. Suddenly she felt sad, a peculiar, serene kind of sadness. It grew from the inside out—now and then almost escaping in a sigh. Because it couldn't quite escape, it hurt; she envied the locusts who were letting their sadness escape in that reiterant, tranquil song.

She was glad when, at last, grandpa said:

“How'd you like to go in and play me a tune, Missy?”

“Oh, I'd love to, grandpa!” Missy jumped up eagerly.

So grandpa lighted the parlour lamp, whose crystal bangles now looked like enormous diamonds; and a delicious time commenced. Grandpa got out his cloth-covered hymnal, and she played again those hymns which mingle so inexplicably with the feelings inside you. Not even her difficulties with the organ—such as forgetting occasionally to treadle, or having the keys pop up soundlessly from under her fingers—could mar that feeling. Especially when grandpa added his bass to the music, a deep bass so impressive as to make it improper to question its harmony, even in your own mind.

Grandma had come in and seated herself in her little willow rocker; she was rocking in time to the music, her eyes closed, and saying nothing—just listening to the two of them. And, playing those hymns, with grandpa singing and grandma listening, the new religious feeling grew and grew and grew in Missy till it seemed to flow out of her and fill the room. It flowed on out and filled the yard, the town, the world; and upward, upward, upward—she was one with the sky and moon and stars...

At last, in a little lull, grandpa said:

“Now, Missy, my song—you know.”

Missy knew very well what grandpa's favourite was; it was one of the first pieces she had learned by heart. So she played for him “Silver Threads among the Gold.”

“Thanks, baby,” said grandpa when she had finished. There was a suspicious brightness in his eyes. And a suspicious brightness in grandma's, too. So, though she wasn't unhappy at all, she felt her own eyes grow moist. Grandpa and grandma weren't really unhappy, either. Why, when people are not really unhappy at all, do their eyes fill just of themselves?

And now was the moment of the great surprise at hand. Missy could scarcely wait. It must be admitted that, during the interminable time that grandpa was reading his chapter—it was even a longer chapter than usual to-night—and while grandma was reading her shorter one, Missy was not attending. She was repeating to herself the Twenty-third Psalm. And even when they all knelt, grandpa beside the big Morris chair and grandma beside the little willow rocker and Missy beside the “patent rocker” with the prettiest crocheted tidy—her thoughts were still in a divine channel exclusively her own.

But now, at last, came the time for that channel to be widened; she closed her eyes tighter, clasped her hands together, and began:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want, He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters...”

How beautiful it was! Unconsciously her voice lifted—quavered—lowered—lifted again, with “expression.” And she had the oddest complex sensation; she could, through her tightly closed eyes, vision herself kneeling there; while, at the same time, she could feel her spirit floating away, mingling with the air, melting into the night, fusing with all the divine mystery of heaven and earth. And her soul yearned for more mystery, for more divinity, with an inexpressible yearning.

Yet all the time she was conscious of the dramatic figure she made, and of how pleased and impressed her audience must be; in fact, as her voice “tremuloed” on that last sublime “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” she unclosed one eye to note the effect.

Both the grey heads remained prayerfully bent; but at her “Amen” both of them lifted. And oh! what a reward was the expression in those two pairs of eyes!

Grandma came swiftly to her and kissed her, and exclaimed:

“Why, however did you learn all that long Psalm, dear? And you recited it so beautifully, too!—Not a single mistake! I never was prouder in my life!”

Grandpa didn't kiss her, but he kept saying over and over:

“Just think of that baby!—the dear little baby.”

And Missy, despite her spiritual exaltation, couldn't help feeling tremendously pleased.

“It was a surprise—I thought you'd be surprised,” she remarked with satisfaction.

Grandma excitedly began to ask all kinds of questions as to how Missy came to pick out that particular Psalm, and what difficulties she experienced in learning it all; but it was grandpa who, characteristically, enquired:

“And what does it mean to you, Missy?”

“Mean—?” she repeated.

“Yes. For instance, what does that last verse mean?”

“'Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life—?' That—?”

“Yes, baby.”

“Why, I think I see myself walking through some big, thick woods. It's springtime, and the trees are all green, and the grass slick and soft. And birds are singing, and the wind's singing in the leaves, too. And the sun's shining, and all the clouds have silver edges.”

She paused.

“Yes, dear,” said grandpa.

“That's the house of the Lord,” she explained.

“Yes, dear,” said grandpa again. “What else?”

“Well, I'm skipping and jumping along, for I'm happy to be in the house of the Lord. And there are three little fairies, all dressed in silver and gold, and with paper-flowers in their hair, and long diamond bangles hanging like fringe on their skirts. They're following me, and they're skipping and jumping, too. They're the three fairies in the verse.”

“The three fairies?” Grandpa seemed puzzled.

“Yes. It says 'Surely goodness and mercy,' you know.”

“But that makes only two, doesn't it?” said grandpa, still puzzled.

Missy laughed at his stupidity.

“Why, no!—Three!” She counted them off on her fingers: “Surely—and Goodness—and Mercy. Don't you see?”

“Oh, yes, dear—I see now,” said grandpa, very slowly. “I wasn't counting Surely.”

Just then came a chuckle from the doorway. Missy hadn't seen Pete enter, else she would have been less free in revealing her real thoughts. What had he overheard?

Still laughing, Pete advanced into the room.

“So there's a fairy named 'Surely,' is there? What's the colour of her eyes, Missy?”

Missy shrank a little closer into the haven of grandpa's knees. And grandpa, in the severe voice that made the other children stand in awe of him, said:

“That will do, Peter!”

But Peter, unawed, went on:

“I know, grandpa—but she's such a funny little dingbat! And now, that she's turned pious—”

Grandpa interrupted him with a gesture of the hand.

“I said that'd do, Peter. If you'd find some time to attend prayers instead of cavorting round over town, it wouldn't hurt you any.”

Then grandma, who, though she was fond of Missy, was fond of Pete also, joined in defensively:

“Pete hasn't been cavorting round over town, grandpa—he's just been over to the Curriers'.”

At that Missy turned interested eyes upon her big cousin. He'd been calling on Polly Currier again! Polly Currier was one of the prettiest big girls in Cherryvale. Missy gazed at Pete, so handsome in his stylish-looking blue serge coat and sharply creased white ducks, debonairly twirling the bamboo walking-stick which the Cherryvale boys, half-enviously, twitted him about, and felt the wings of Romance whirring in the already complicated air. For this additional element of interest he furnished, she could almost forgive him his scoffing attitude toward her own most serious affairs.

But Pete, fortunately for his complacency, didn't suspect the reason for her concentrated though friendly gaze.

All in all, Missy felt quite at peace when she went upstairs. Grandma tucked her into bed—the big, extraordinarily soft feather-bed which was one of the outstanding features of grandma's fascinating house.

And there—wonder of wonders!—the moon, through grandma's window, found her out just as readily as though she'd been in her own little bed at home. Again it carried in the grace of God, to rest through the night on her pillow.

Next day was an extremely happy day. She had coffee for breakfast, and was permitted by Alma, the hired girl, to dry all the cups and saucers. Then she dusted the parlour, including all the bric-a-brac, which made dusting here an engrossing occupation. Later she helped grandpa hoe the cabbages, and afterward “puttered around” with grandma in the flower-garden. Then she and grandma listened, very quietly, through a crack in the nearly-closed door while grandpa conducted a hearing in the parlour. To tell the truth, Missy wasn't greatly interested in whether Mrs. Brenning's chickens had scratched up Mrs. Jones's tomato-vines, hut she pretended to be interested because grandma was.

And then, after the hearing was over, and the Justice-of-the-Peace had become just grandpa again, Missy went into the parlour and played hymns. Then came dinner, a splendid and heavy repast which constrained her to take a nap. After the nap she felt better, and sat out on the front porch to learn crocheting from grandma.

For a while Pete sat with them, and Polly Currier from next door came over, too. She looked awfully pretty all in white—white shirtwaist and white duck skirt and white canvas oxfords. Presently Pete suggested that Polly go into the parlour with him to look at some college snapshots. Missy wondered why he didn't bring them out to the porch where it was cooler, but she was too polite to ask.

They stayed in there a long time—what were they doing? For long spaces she couldn't even hear their voices. Grandma chattered away with her usual vivacity; presently she suggested that they leave off crocheting and work on paper-flowers a while. What a delight! Missy was just learning the intricacies of peonies, and adored to squeeze the rosy tissue-paper over the head of a hat-pin and observe the amazing result.

“Run up to my room, dear,” said grandma. “You'll find the box on the closet shelf.”

Missy knew the “paper-flower box.” It was a big hat-box, appropriately covered with pink-posied paper—a quaintly beautiful box.

In the house, passing the parlour door, she tip-toed, scarcely knowing why. There was now utter silence in the parlour—why were they so still? Perhaps they had gone out somewhere. Without any definite plan, but still tip-toeing in the manner she and grandma had approached to overhear the law-suit, she moved toward the partly-closed door. Through the crevice they were out of vision, but she could hear a subdued murmur—they were in there after all! Missy, too interested to be really conscious of her act, strained her ears.

Polly Currier murmured:

“Why, what do you mean?—what are you doing?”

Pete murmured:

“What a question!—I'm trying to kiss you.”

“Let me go!—you're mussing my dress! You can't kiss me—let me go!”

Pete murmured:

“Not till you let me kiss you!”

Polly Currier murmured:

“I suppose that's the way you talk to all the girls!—I know you college men!”

Pete murmured, a whole world of reproach in one word:

“Polly.”

They became silent—a long silence. Missy stood petrified behind the door; her breathing ceased but her heart beat quickly. Here was Romance—not the made-up kind of Romance you surreptitiously read in mother's magazines, but real Romance! And she—Missy—knew them both! And they were just the other side of the door!

Too thrilled to reflect upon the nature of her deed, scarcely conscious of herself as a being at all, Missy craned her neck and peered around the door. They were sitting close together on the divan. Pete's arm was about Polly Currier's shoulder. And he was kissing her! Curious, that! Hadn't she just heard Polly tell him that he couldn't?... Oh, beautiful!

She started noiselessly to withdraw, but her foot struck the conch shell which served as a door-stop. At the noise two startled pairs of eyes were upon her immediately; and Pete, leaping up, advanced upon her with a fierce whisper:

“You little spy-eye!—What're you up to? You little spy-eye!”

A swift wave of shame engulfed Missy.

“Oh, I'm sorry!” she cried in a stricken voice. “I didn't mean to, Pete—I—”

He interrupted her, still in that fierce whisper:

“Stop yelling, can't you! No, I suppose you 'didn't mean to'—Right behind the door!” His eyes withered her.

“Truly, I didn't, Pete.” Her own voice, now, had sunk to a whisper. “Cross my heart I didn't!”

But he still glared.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself—always sneaking round! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

“Oh, I am, Pete,” she quavered, though, in fact, she wasn't sure in just what lay the shamefulness of her deed; till he'd spoken she had felt nothing but Romance in the air.

“Well, you ought to be,” Pete reiterated. He hesitated a second, then went on:

“You aren't going to blab it all around, are you?”

“Oh, no!” breathed Missy, horrified at such a suggestion. “Well, see that you don't! I'll give you some candy to-morrow.”

“Yes—candy,” came Polly's voice faintly from the divan.

Then, as the subject seemed to be exhausted, Missy crept away, permeated with the sense of her sin.

It was horrible! To have sinned just when she'd found the wonderful new feeling. Just when she'd resolved to be good always, that she might dwell in the house of the Lord forever. She hadn't intended to sin; but she must have been unusually iniquitous. Pete's face had told her that. It was particularly horrible because sin had stolen upon her so suddenly. Does sin always take you unawares, that way? A new and black fear settled heavily over her.

When she finally returned to the porch with the paper-flowers box, she was embarrassed by grandma's asking what had kept her so long. It would have been easy to make up an excuse, but this new sense of sin restrained her from lying. So she mumbled unintelligibly, till grandma interrupted:

“Do you feel sick, Missy?” she asked anxiously.

“No, ma'am.”

“Are you sure? You ate so much at dinner. Maybe you didn't take a long enough nap.”

“I'm not sleepy, grandma.”

But grandma insisted on feeling her forehead—her hands. They were hot.

“I think I'd better put you to bed for a little while,” said grandma. “You're feverish. And if you're not better by night, you mustn't go to the meeting.”

Missy's heart sank, weighted with a new fear. It would be an unbearable calamity to miss going to the meeting. For, that night, a series of “revivals” were to start at the Methodist Church; and, though father was a Presbyterian (to oblige mother), grandpa and grandma were Methodists and would go every night; and so long as mother was away, she could go to meeting with them. In the fervour of the new religious feeling she craved sanctified surroundings.

So, though she didn't feel at all sick and though she wanted desperately to make paper-flowers, she docilely let herself be put to bed. Anyway, perhaps it was just a penance sent to her by our Lord, to make atonement for her sin.

By supper-time grandma agreed that she seemed well enough to go. Throughout the meal Pete, who was wearing an aloof and serious manner, refrained from looking at her, and she strived to keep her own anxious gaze away from him. He wasn't going to the meeting with the other three.

Just as the lingering June twilight was beginning to darken—the most peaceful hour of the day—Missy walked off sedately between her grandparents. She was wearing her white “best dress.” It seemed appropriate that your best clothes should be always involved in the matter of church going; that the spiritual beatification within should be reflected by the garments without.

The Methodist church in Cherryvale prided itself that it was not “new-fangled.” It was not nearly so pretentious in appearance as was the Presbyterian church. Missy, in her heart, preferred stained-glass windows and their glorious reflections, as an asset to religion; but at night services you were not apt to note that deficiency.

She sat well up front with her grandparents, as befitted their position as pillars of the church, and from this vantage had a good view of the proceedings. She could see every one in the choir, seated up there behind the organ on the side platform. Polly Currier was in the choir; she wasn't a Methodist, but she had a flute-like soprano voice, and the Methodists—whom all the town knew had “poor singing”—had overstepped the boundaries of sectarianism for this revival. Polly looked like an angel in pink lawn and rose-wreathed leghorn hat; she couldn't know that Missy gazed upon her with secret adoration as a creature of Romance—one who had been kissed! Missy continued to gaze at Polly during the preliminary songs—tunes rather disappointing, not so beautiful as Missy's own favourite hymns—till the preacher appeared.

The Reverend Poole—“Brother” Poole as grandpa called him, though he wasn't a relation—was a very tall, thin man with a blonde, rather vacuous face; but at exhortation and prayer he “had the gift.” For so good a man, he had a remarkably poor opinion of the virtues of his fellow-men. Missy couldn't understand half his fiery eloquence; but she felt his inspiration; and she gathered that most of the congregation must be sinners. Knowing herself to be a sinner, she wasn't so much surprised at that.

Finally Brother Poole, with quavering voice, urged all sinners to come forward and kneel at the feet of Jesus, and pray to be “washed in the blood of the lamb.” Thus would their sins be forgiven them, and their souls be born anew. Missy's soul quivered and stretched up to be born anew. So, with several other sinners—including grandpa and grandma whom she had never before suspected of sin—she unhesitatingly walked forward. She invoked the grace of God; her head, her body, her feet seemed very light and remote as she walked; she seemed, rather, to float; her feet scarcely touched the red-ingrain aisle “runner”—she was nearly all spirit. She knelt before the altar between grandpa and grandma, one hand tight-clasped in grandpa's.

Despite her exaltation, she was conscious of material things. For instance she noted that Mrs. Brenning was on the other side of grandma, and wondered whether she were atoning for the sins of her chickens against Mrs. Jones's tomato-vines; she noticed, too, that Mrs. Brenning's hat had become askew, which gave her a queer, unsuitable, rakish look. Yet Missy didn't feel like laughing. She felt like closing her eyes and waiting to be born anew. But, before closing her eyes, she sent a swift glance up at the choir platform. Polly Currier was still up there, looking very placid as she sang with the rest of the choir. They were singing a rollicking tune. She listened—

“Pull for the shore, sailor! Pull for the shore! Leave the poor old strangled wretch, and pull for the shore!”

Who was the old strangled wretch? A sinner, doubtless. Ah, the world was full of sin. She looked again at Polly. Polly's placidity was reassuring; evidently she was not a sinner. But it was time to close her eyes. However, before doing so, she sent a swift upward glance toward the preacher. He had a look on his face as though an electric light had been turned on just inside. He was praying fervently for God's grace upon “these Thy repentant creatures.” Missy shut her eyes, repented violently, and awaited the miracle. What would happen? How would it feel, when her soul was born anew? Surely it must be time. She waited and waited, while her limbs grew numb and her soul continued to quiver and stretch up. But in vain; she somehow didn't feel the grace of God nearly as much as last Sunday when the Presbyterian choir was singing “Asleep in Jesus,” while the sun shone divinely through the stained-glass window.

She felt cheated and very sad when, at last, the preacher bade the repentant ones stand up again. Evidently she hadn't repented hard enough. Very soberly she walked back to the pew and took her place between grandpa and grandma. They looked rather sober, too; she wondered if they, also, had had trouble with their souls.

Then Brother Poole bade the repentant sinners to “stand up and testify.” One or two of the older sinners, who had repented before, rose first to show how this was done. And then some of the younger ones, after being urged, followed example. Sobbing, they testified as to their depth of sin and their sense of forgiveness, while Brother Poole intermittently cut in with staccato exclamations such as “Praise the Lord!” and “My Redeemer Liveth!”

Missy was eager to see whether grandpa and grandma would stand up and testify. When neither of them did so, she didn't know whether she was more disappointed or relieved. Perhaps their silence denoted that their souls had been born anew quite easily. Or again—! She sighed; her soul, at all events, had proved a failure.

She was silent on the way home. Grandpa and grandma held her two hands clasped in theirs and over her head talked quietly. She was too dejected to pay much attention to what they were saying; caught only scattered, meaningless phrases: “Of course that kind of frenzy is sincere but—” “Simple young things—” “No more idea of sin or real repentance—”

But Missy was engrossed with her own dismal thoughts. The blood of the Lamb had passed her by.

And that night, for the first time in three nights, the grace of God didn't flow in on the flood of moonlight through her window. She tossed on her unhallowed pillow in troubled dreams. Once she cried out in sleep, and grandma came hurrying in with a candle. Grandma sat down beside her—what was this she was saying about “green-apple pie”? Missy wished to ask her about it—green-apple pie—green-apple pie—Before she knew it she was off to sleep again.

It was the next morning while she was still lying in bed, that Missy made the Great Resolve. That hour is one when big Ideas—all kinds of unusual thoughts—are very apt to come. When you're not yet entirely awake; not taken up with trivial, everyday things. Your mind, then, has full swing.

Lying there in grandma's soft feather bed, Missy wasn't yet distracted by daytime affairs. She dreamily regarded the patch of blue sky showing through the window, and bits of fleecy cloud, and flying specks of far-away birds. How wonderful to be a bird and live up in the beautiful sky! When she died and became an angel, she could live up there! But was she sure she'd become an angel? That reflection gradually brought her thoughts to the events of the preceding night.

Though she could recall those events distinctly, Missy now saw them in a different kind of way. Now she was able to look at the evening as a whole, with herself merely a part of the whole. She regarded that sort of detached object which was herself. That detached Missy had gone to the meeting, and failed to find grace. Others had gone and found grace. Even though they had acted no differently from Missy. Like her they sang tunes; listened to the preacher; bowed the head; went forward and knelt at the feet of Jesus; repented; went back to the pews; stood up and testified—

Oh!

Suddenly Missy gave a little sound, and stirred. She puckered her brows in intense concentration. Perhaps—perhaps that was why!

And then she made the Great Resolve.

Soon after breakfast, Pete appeared with a bag of candy.

“I don't deserve it,” said Missy humbly.

“You bet you don't!” acquiesced Pete.

So even he recognized her state of sin! Her Great Resolve intensified.

That morning, for the first time in her life at grandma's house, Missy shirked her “chores.” She found paper and pencil, took a small Holy Bible, and stole back to the tool-house where grandpa kept his garden things and grandma her washtubs. For that which she now was to do, Missy would have preferred the more beautiful summerhouse at home; but grandma had no summerhouse, and this offered the only sure seclusion.

She stayed out there a long time, seated on an upturned washtub; read the Holy Bible for awhile; then became absorbed in the ecstasies of composition. So engrossed was she that she didn't at first hear grandma calling her.

Grandma was impatiently waiting on the back porch.

“What in the world are you doing out there?” she demanded.

Loath to lie, now, Missy made a compromise with her conscience.

“I was reading the Holy Bible, grandma.”

Grandma's expression softened; and all she said was:

“Well, dinner's waiting, now.”

Grandpa was staying down town and Pete was over at the Curriers', so there were only grandma and Missy at the table. Missy tried to attend to grandma's chatter and make the right answers in the right places. But her mind kept wandering; and once grandma caught her whispering.

“What is the matter with you, Missy? What are you whispering about?”

Guiltily Missy clapped her hand to her mouth.

“Oh! was I whispering?”

“Yes.”

“I guess it was just a piece I'm learning.”

“What piece?”

“I—I—it's going to be a surprise.”

“Oh, another surprise? Well, that'll be nice,” said grandma.

Missy longed acutely to be alone. It was upsetting to have to carry on a conversation. That often throws you off of what's absorbing your thoughts.

So she was glad when, after dinner, grandma said:

“I think you'd better take a little nap, dear. You don't seem quite like yourself—perhaps you'd best not attempt the meeting to-night.”

That last was a bomb-shell; but Missy decided not to worry about such a possible catastrophe till the time should come. She found a chance to slip out to the tool-house and rescue the Holy Bible and the sheet of paper, the latter now so scratched out and interlined as to be unintelligible to anyone save an author.

When at last she was alone in her room, she jumped out of bed—religion, it seems, sometimes makes deception a necessity.

For a time she worked on the paper, bending close over it, cheeks flushed, eyes shining, whispering as she scratched.

At supper, Missy was glad to learn that Pete had planned to attend the meeting that evening. “Revivals” were not exactly in Pete's line; but as long as Polly Currier had to be there, he'd decided he might as well go to see her home. Moreover, he'd persuaded several others of “the crowd” to go along and make a sort of party of it.

And Missy's strained ears caught no ominous suggestion as to her own staying at home.

Later, walking sedately to the church between her grandparents, Missy felt her heart beating so hard she feared they might hear it. Once inside the church, she drew a long breath. Oh, if only she didn't have so long to wait! How could she wait?

Polly Currier was again seated on the choir platform, to night an angel in lavender mull. She had a bunch of pansies at her belt—pansies out of grandma's garden. Pete must have given them to her! She now and then smiled back toward the back pew where Pete and “the crowd” were sitting.

To Missy's delight Polly sang a solo. It was “One Sweetly Solemn Thought”—oh, rapture! Polly's high soprano floated up clear and piercing-sweet. It was so beautiful that it hurt. Missy shut her eyes. She could almost see angels in misty white and floating golden hair. Something quivered inside her; once more on the wings of music was the religious feeling stealing back to her.

The solo was finished, but Missy kept her eyes closed whenever she thought no one was looking. She was anxious to hold the religious feeling till her soul could be entirely born anew. And she had quite a long time to wait. That made her task difficult and complicated; for it's not easy at the same time to retain an emotional state and to rehearse a piece you're afraid of forgetting.

But the service gradually wore through. Now they were at the “come forward and sit at the feet of Jesus.” To-night grandpa and grandma didn't do that; they merely knelt in the pew with bowed heads. So Missy also knelt with bowed head. She was by this time in a state difficult to describe; a quivering jumble of excitement, eagerness, timidity, fear, hope, and exaltation...

And now at last, was come the time!

Brother Poole, again wearing the look on his face as of an electric light turned on within, exhorted the repentant ones to “stand up and testify.”

Missy couldn't bear to wait for someone else to begin. She jumped hastily to her feet. Grandma tried to pull her down. Missy frowned slightly—why was grandma tugging at her skirt? Tugging aways she extended her arms with palms flat together and thumbs extended—one of Brother Poole's most effective gestures—and began:

“My soul rejoiceth because I have seen the light. Yea, it burns in my soul and my soul is restoreth. I will fear no evil even if it is born again. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I have been a sinner but—”

Why was grandma pulling at her skirt? Missy twitched away and, raising her voice to a higher key, went on:

“I said I've been a sinner, but I've repented my sins and want to lead a blameless life. I repent my sins—O Lord, please forgive me for being a spy-eye when Cousin Pete kissed Polly Currier, and guide me to lead a blameless life. Amen.”

She sat down.

A great and heavenly stillness came and wrapped itself about her, a soft and velvety stillness; to shut out gasp or murmur or stifled titter.

The miracle had happened! It was as if an inner light had been switched on; a warm white light which tingled through to every fibre of her being. Surely this was the flame divine! It was her soul being born anew...

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER II. “Your True Friend, Melissa M.”

Missy knew, the moment she opened her eyes, that golden June morning, that it was going to be a happy day. Missy, with Poppylinda purring beside her, found this mysterious, irradiant feeling flowing out of her heart almost as tangible as a third live being in her quaint little room. It seemed a sort of left-over, still vaguely attached, from the wonderful dream she had just been having. Trying to recall the dream, she shut her eyes again; Missy's one regret, in connection with her magical dreams, was that the sparkling essence of them was apt to become dim when she awoke. But now, when she opened her eyes, the suffusion still lingered.

For a long, quiet, blissful moment, she lay smiling at the spot where the sunlight, streaming level through the lace-curtained window, fell on the rose-flowered chintz of the valances. Missy liked those colours very much; then her eyes followed the beam of light to where it spun a prism of fairy colours on the mirror above the high-boy, and she liked that ecstatically. She liked, too, by merely turning her head on the pillow, to glimpse, through the parting of the curtains, the ocean of blue sky with its flying cloud ships, so strange; and to hear the morning song of the birds and the happy hum of insects, the music seeming almost to filter through the lace curtains in a frescoed pattern which glided, alive, along the golden roadway of sunshine. She even liked the monotonous metallic rattle which betold that old Jeff was already at work with the lawn-mower.

All this in a silent moment crammed to the full with vibrant ecstasy; then Missy remembered, specifically, the Wedding drawing every day nearer, and the new Pink Dress, and the glory to be hers when she should strew flowers from a huge leghorn hat, and her rapture brimmed over. Physically and spiritually unable to keep still another second, she suddenly sat up.

“Oh, Poppylinda!” she whispered. “I'm so happy—so happy!”

Everyone knows—that is, everyone who knows kittens—that kittens, like babies, listen with their eyes. To Missy's whispered confidence, Poppylinda, without stirring, opened her lids and blinked her yellow eyes.

“Aren't you happy, too? Say you're happy, Poppy, darling!”

Poppy was stirred to such depths that mere eye-blinking could not express her emotion. She opened her mouth, so as to expose completely her tiny red tongue, and then, without lingual endeavour, began to hum a gentle, crooning rumble down somewhere near her stomach. Yes; Poppy was happy.

The spirit of thanksgiving glamorously enwrapped these two all the time Missy was dressing. Like the efficient big girl of twelve that she was, Missy drew her own bath and, later, braided her own hair neatly. As she tied the ribbons on those braids, now crossed in a “coronet” over her head, she gave the ghost of a sigh. This morning she didn't want to wear her every-day bows; but dutifully she tied them on, a big brown cabbage above each ear. When she had scrambled into her checked gingham “sailor suit,” all spick and span, Missy stood eying herself in the mirror for a wistful moment, wishing her tight braids might metamorphose into lovely, hanging curls like Kitty Allen's. They come often to a “strange child”—these moments of vague longing to overhear one's self termed a “pretty child”—especially on the eve of an important occasion.

But thoughts of that important occasion speedily chased away consciousness of self. And downstairs in the cheerful dining room, with the family all gathered round the table, Missy, her cheeks glowing pink and her big grey eyes ashine, found it difficult to eat her oatmeal, for very rapture. In the bay window, the geraniums on the sill nodded their great, biossomy heads at her knowingly. Beyond, the big maple was stirring its leaves, silver side up, like music in the breeze. Away across the yard, somewhere, Jeff was making those busy, restful sounds with the lawn-mower. These alluring things, and others stretching out to vast mental distances, quite deadened, for Missy, the family's talk close at hand.

“When I ran over to the Greenleaf's to borrow the sugar,” Aunt Nettie was saying, “May White was there, and she and Helen hurried out of the dining room when they saw me. I'm sure they'd been crying, and—”

“S-sh!” warned Mrs. Merriam, with a glance toward Missy. Then, in a louder tone: “Eat your cereal, Missy. Why are you letting it get cold?”

Missy brought her eyes back from space with an answering smile. “I was thinking,” she explained.

“What of, Missy?” This, encouragingly, from father.

“Oh, my dream, last night.”

“What did you dream about?”

“Oh—mountains,” replied Missy, somewhat vaguely.

“For the land's sake!” exclaimed Aunt Nettie. “What ever put such a thing into her head? She never saw a mountain in her life!” Grown-ups have a disconcerting way of speaking of children, even when present, in the third person. But Aunt Nettie finally turned to Missy with a direct (and dreaded): “What did they look like, Missy?”

“Oh—mountains,” returned Missy, still vague.

At a sign from mother, the others did not press her further. When she had finished her breakfast, Missy approached her mother, and the latter, reading the question in her eyes, asked:

“Well, what is it, Missy?”

“I feel—like pink to-day,” faltered Missy, half-embarrassed.

But her mother did not ask for explanation. She only pondered a moment.

“You know,” reminded the supplicant, “I have to try on the Pink Dress this morning.”

“Very well, then,” granted mother. “But only the second-best ones.”

Missy's face brightened and she made for the door.

Before she got altogether out of earshot, Aunt Nettie began: “I don't know that it's wise to humour her in her notions. 'Feel like pink!'—what in the world does she mean by that?”

Missy was glad the question had not been put to her; for, to have saved her life, she couldn't have answered it intelligibly. She was out of hearing too soon to catch her mother's answer:

“She's just worked up over the wedding, and being a flower-girl and all.”

“Well, I don't believe,” stated Aunt Nettie with the assurance that spinsters are wont to show in discussing such matters, “that it's good for children to let them work themselves up that way. She'll be as much upset as the bridegroom if Helen does back out.”

“Oh, I don't think old Mrs. Greenleaf would ever let her break it off, now” said Mrs. Merriam, stooping to pick up the papers which her husband had left strewn over the floor.

“She's hard as rocks,” agreed Aunt Nettie.

“Though,” Mrs. Merriam went on, “when it's a question of her daughter's happiness—”

“A little unhappiness would serve Helen Green leaf right,” commented the other tartly. “She's spoiled to death and a flirt. I think it was a lucky day for young Doc Alison when she jilted him.”

“She's just young and vain,” championed Mrs. Merriam, carefully folding the papers and laying them in the rack. “Any pretty girl in Helen's position couldn't help being spoiled. And you must admit nothing's ever turned her head—Europe, or her visits to Cleveland, or anything.”

“The Cleveland man is handsome,” said Aunt Nettie irrelevantly—the Cleveland man was the bridegroom-elect.

“Yes, in a stylish, sporty kind of way. But I don't know—” She hesitated a moment, then concluded: “Missy doesn't like him.”

At that Aunt Nettie laughed with genuine mirth. “What on earth do you think a child would know about it?” she ridiculed.

Meanwhile the child, whose departure had thus loosed free speech, was leagues distant from the gossip and the unrest which was its source. Her pink hair bows, even the second-best ones, lifted her to a state which made it much pleasanter to idle in her window, sniffing at the honey-suckle, than to hurry down to the piano. She longed to make up something which, like a tune of water rippling over pink pebbles, was running through her head. But faithfully, at last, she toiled through her hour, and then was called on to mind the Baby.

This last duty was a real pleasure. For she could wheel the perambulator off to the summerhouse, in a secluded, sweet-smelling corner of the yard, and there recite poetry aloud. To reinforce those verses she knew by heart, she carried along the big Anthology which, in its old-blue binding, contrasted so satisfyingly with the mahogany table in the sitting-room. The first thing she read was “Before the Beginning of Years” from “Atalanta in Calydon;” Missy especially adored Swinburne—so liltingly incomprehensible.

The performance, as ever, was highly successful all around. Baby really enjoyed it and Poppylinda as well, both of them blinking in placid appreciation. And as for Missy, the liquid sound of the metres rolling off her own lips, the phrases so beautiful and so “deep,” seemed to lift a choking something right up into her throat until she could have wept with the sweet pain of it. She did, as a matter of fact, happy tears, about which her two auditors asked no embarrassing question. Baby merely gurgled, and Poppylinda essayed to climb the declaimer's skirts.

“Sit down, sad Soul!” Missy's mood could no longer even attempt to mate with prose. She turned through the pages of the Anthology until she came to another favourite:

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like young Lochinvar.

This she read through, with a fine, swinging rhythm. “I think that last stanza's perfectly exquisite—don't you?” Missy enquired of her mute audience. And she repeated it, as unctuously as though she were the poet herself. Then, quite naturally, this romance recalled to her the romance next door, so deliciously absorbing her waking and dreaming hours—the romance of her own Miss Princess. Miss Princess—Missy's more formal adaptation of Young Doc's soubriquet for Helen Greenleaf in the days of his romance—was the most beautiful heroine imaginable. And the Wedding was next week, and Missy was to walk first of all the six flower-girls, and the Pink Dress was all but done, and the Pink Stockings—silk!—were upstairs in the third drawer of the high-boy! Oh, it was a golden world, radiant with joy. Of course—it's only earth, after all, and not heaven—she'd rather the bridegroom was going to be young Doc. But Miss Princess had arranged it this other way—her bridegroom had come out of the East. And the Wedding was almost here!... There never was morning so fair, nor grass so vivid and shiny, nor air so soft. Above her head the cherry-buds were swelling, almost ready to burst. From the open windows of the house, down the street, sounds from a patient piano, flattered by distance, betokened that Kitty Allen was struggling with “Perpetual Motion”; Missy, who had finished her struggles with that abomination-to-beginners a month previously felt her sense of beatitude deepen.

Presently into this Elysium floated her mother's voice, summoning her to the house. Rounding the corner of the back walk with the perambulator, she collided with the grocer-boy. He was a nice-mannered boy, picking up the Anthology and Baby's doll from the ground, and handing them to her with a charming smile. Besides, he had very bright, sparkling eyes. Missy fancied he must be some lost Prince, and inwardly resolved to make up, as soon as alone, a story to this effect.

In the house, mother told her it was time to go to Miss Martin's to try on the Pink Dress.

Down the street, she encountered Mr. Hackett, the rich bridegroom come out of the East, a striking figure, on that quiet street, in the natty white flannels suggesting Cleveland, Atlantic City, and other foreign places.

“Well, if here isn't Sappho!” he greeted her gaily. Missy blushed. Not for worlds had she suspected he was hearing her, that unlucky morning in the grape-arbour, when she recited her latest Poem to Miss Princess. Now she smiled perfunctorily, and started to pass him.

But Mr. Hackett, swinging his stick, stood with his feet wide apart and looked down at her.

“How's the priestess of song, this fine morning?” he persisted.

“All-right,” stammered Missy.

He laughed, as if actually enjoying her confusion. Missy observed that his eyes were red-rimmed, and his face a pasty white. She wondered whether he was sick; but he jauntily waved his stick at her and went on his way.

Missy, a trifle subdued, continued hers.

But oh, it is a wonderful world! You never know what any moment may bring you. Adventures fairy-sent surprises, await you at the most unexpected turns, spring at you from around the first corner.

It was around the very first corner, in truth, that Missy met young Doc Alison, buzzing leisurely along in his Ford.

“Hello, Missy,” he greeted. “Like a lift?”

Missy would. Young Doc jumped out, and, in a deferential manner she admired very much, assisted her into the little car as though she were a grown-up and lovely young lady. Young Doc was a nice man. She knew him well. He had felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, sent her Valentines, taken her riding, and shown her many other little courtesies for as far back as she could remember. Then, too, she greatly admired his looks. He was tall and lean and wiry. His face was given to quick flashes of smiling; and his eyes could be dreamy or luminous. He resembled, Missy now decided—and marvelled she hadn't noticed it before—that other young man, Lochinvar, “so faithful in love and so dauntless in war.”

When young Doc politely enquired whether she could steal enough time from her errand to turn about for a run up “The Boulevard,” Missy acquiesced. She regretted she hadn't worn her shirred mull hat. But she decided not to worry about that. After all, her appearance, at the present moment, didn't so much matter. What did matter was the way she was going to look next Wednesday—and she excitedly began telling young Doc about her coming magnificence, “It's silk organdie,” she said in a reverent tone, “and has garlands of rosebuds.” She went on and told him of the big leghorn hat to be filled with flowers, of the Pink Stockings—best of all, silk!—waiting, in tissue-paper, in the high-boy drawer.

“Oh, I can hardly wait!” she concluded rapturously.

Young Doc, guiding the car around the street-sprinkling wagon, did not answer. Beyond the wagon, Mr. Hackett, whom the Ford had overtaken, was swinging along. Missy turned to young Doc with a slight grimace.

“'The poor craven bridegroom said never a word,'” she quoted.

Young Doc permitted himself to smile—not too much. “Why don't you like him, Missy?”

Missy shook her head, without other reply. It would have been difficult for her to express why she didn't like stylish Mr. Hackett.

“I wish,” she said suddenly, “that you were going to be the bridegroom, Doc.”

He smiled a wry smile at her. “Well, to tell the truth, I wish so, too, Missy.”

“Well, she'll be coming back to visit us often, and maybe you can take us out riding again.”

“Maybe—but after getting used to big imported cars, I'm afraid one doesn't care much for a Ford.”

There was a note of cynicism, of pain, which, because she didn't know what it was, cut Missy to the heart. It is all very well, in Romance and Poems, to meet with unhappy, discarded lovers—they played an essential part in many of the best ballads in the Anthology; but when that romantic role falls, in real life, on the shoulders of a nice young Doc, the matter assumes a different complexion. Missy's own ecstasy over the Wedding suddenly loomed thoughtless, selfish, wicked. She longed timidly to reach over and pat that lean brown hand resting on the steering-wheel. Two sentences she formed in her mind, only to abandon them unspoken, when, to her relief, the need for delicate diplomacy was temporarily removed by the car's slowing to a stop before Miss Martin's gate.

Inside the little white cottage, however, in Miss Martin's sitting-room—so queer and fascinating with its “forms,” its samples and “trimmings” pinned to the curtains, its alluring display of fashion magazines and “charts,” and its eternal litter of varicoloured scraps over the floor—Missy's momentary dejection could but vanish. Finally, when in Miss Martin's artfully tilted cheval glass, she surveyed the pink vision which was herself, gone, for the time, was everything of sadness in the world. She turned her head this way and that, craning to get the effect from every angle-the bouffance of the skirt, the rosebuds wreathing the sides, the butterfly sash in the back. Adjured by Miss Martin to stand still, she stood vibrantly poised like a lily-stem waiting the breath of the wind; bade to “lift up your arms,” she obeyed and visioned winged fairies alert for flight. Even when Miss Martin, carried away by her zeal in fitting, stuck a pin through the pink tissue clear into the warmer, softer pink beneath, Missy scarcely felt the prick.

But, at the midday dinner-table, that sympathetic uneasiness returned. Father, home from the office, was full of indignation over something “disgraceful” he had heard down town. Though the conversation was held tantalizingly above Missy's full comprehension, she could gather that the “disgrace” centred in the bachelor dinner which Mr. Hackett had given at the Commercial House the night before. Father evidently held no high opinion of the introduction of “rotten Cleveland performances” nor of the man who had introduced them.

“What 'rotten Cleveland performances'?” asked Missy with lively curiosity.

“Oh, just those late, indigestible suppers,” cut in mother quickly. “Rich food at that hour just kills your stomach. Here, don't you want another strawberry tart, Missy?”

Missy didn't; but she affected a desire for it, and then a keen interest in its consumption. By this artifice, she hoped she might efface herself as a hindrance to continuation of the absorbing talk. But it is a trick of grown-ups to stop dead at the most thrilling points; though she consumed the last crumb of the tart, her ears gained no reward, until mother said:

“As soon as you've finished dinner, Missy, I wish you'd run over to Greenleafs' and ask to borrow Miss Helen's new kimono pattern.”

Missy brightened. The sight of old Mrs. Greenleaf and Miss Princess, bustling gaily about, would lift this strange cloud gathering so ominously. She asked permission to carry along a bunch of sweet peas, and gathered the kind Miss Princess liked best—pinkish lavender blossoms, a delicious colour like the very fringe of a rainbow.

The Greenleafs' coloured maid let her in and showed her into the “den” back of the parlour. “I'll tell Mrs. Greenleaf,” she said. “They're all busy upstairs.”

Very busy they must have been, for Missy had restlessly dangled her feet for what seemed hours, before she heard voices approaching the parlour.

“Oh, I won't—I won't—” It was Miss Princess's voice, almost unrecognizably high and quavering.

“Now, just listen a minute, darling—” This unmistakably Mr. Hackett's languorous, curiously repellent monotone.

“Don't you touch me!”

Missy, stricken by the knowledge she was eavesdropping, peered about for a means of slipping out. But the only door, portiere-hung, was the one leading into the parlour. And now this concealed poor blundering Missy from the speakers while it allowed their talk to drift through.

That talk, stormy and utterly incomprehensible, filled the child with a growing sense of terror. Accusations, quick pleadings, angry retorts, attempts at explanation, all formed a dreadful muttering background out of which shot, like sharp streaks of lightning, occasional clearly-caught phrases: “Charlie White came home dead drunk, I tell you—” “—You know I'm mad about you, Helen, or I wouldn't—” “—Oh, don't you touch me!”

To Missy, trapped and shaking with panic, the storm seemed to have raged hours before she detected a third voice, old Mrs. Greenleaf's, which cut calm and controlled across the area of passion.

“You'd better go out a little while, Porter, and let me talk to her.”

Then another interminable stretch of turmoil, this all the more terrifying because less violent.

“Oh, mother-I can't—” Anger, spent, had given way to broken sobbing.

“I understand how you feel, dear. But you'll—”

“I despise him!”

“I understand, dear. All girls get frightened and—”

“But it isn't that, mother. I don't love him. I can't go on. Won't you, this minute, tell him—tell everybody—?”

“Darling, don't you realize I can't?” Missy had never before heard old Mrs. Greenleaf's voice tremble.

“The invitation, and the trousseau, and the presents, and everything. Think of the scandal, dear. We couldn't. Don't you see, dear, we can't back out, now?”

“O-o-oh.”

“I almost wish—but don't you see—?”

“Oh, I can't stand it another hour!”

“You're excited, dear,” soothingly. “You'd better go rest a while. I'll have a good talk with Porter. And you go upstairs and lie down. The Carrolls' dinner—”

“Oh, dinners, luncheons, clothes. I—”

The despairing sound of Miss Princess's cry, and the throbbing realization that these were calamities she must not overhear, stung Missy to renewed reconnoitering. Tiptoeing over to the window, she fumbled at the fastening of the screen, swung it outward, and, contemplating a jump to the sward below, thrust one foot over the sill.

“Hello, there! What are you up to?”

On the side porch, not twenty feet away, Mr. Hackett was regarding her with amazed and hostile eyes. Missy's heart thumped against her ribs. Her consternation was not lessened when, tossing away his cigarette with a vindictive gesture, he added: “Stay where you are!”

Missy slackened her hold and crouched back like a hunted criminal. And like a hunted criminal he condemned her, a moment later, to old Mrs. Greenleaf.

“That kid from next door has been snooping in here. I caught her trying to sneak out.”

Missy faltered out her explanation.

“I know it wasn't your fault, dear,” said old Mrs. Greenleaf kindly. “What was it you wanted?”

Her errand forgotten, Missy could only attempt a smile and dumbly extend the bouquet.

Old Mrs. Greenleaf took the flowers, then spoke over her shoulder: “I think Helen wants you upstairs, Porter.” Missy had always thought she was like a Roman Matron; now it was upsetting to see the Roman Matron so upset.

“Miss Helen's got a terrible headache and is lying down,” said old Mrs. Greenleaf, fussing over the flowers.

“Oh,” said Missy, desperately tongue-tied and ill-at-ease.

For a long second it endured portentously still in the room and in the world without; then like a sharp thunder-clap out of a summer sky, a door slammed upstairs. There was a sound of someone running down the steps, and Missy glimpsed Mr. Hackett going out the front door, banging the screen after him.

At the last noise, old Mrs. Greenleaf's shoulders stiffened as if under a lash. But she turned quietly and said:

“Thank you so much for the flowers, Missy. I'll give them to her after a while, when she's better. And you can see her to-morrow.”

It was the politest of dismissals. Missy, having remembered the pattern, hurriedly got it and ran home. She had seen a suspicion of tears in old Mrs. Greenleaf's eyes. It was as upsetting as though the bronze Winged Victory on the parlour mantel should begin to weep.

All that afternoon Missy sought solitude. She refused to play croquet with Kitty Allen when that beautiful and most envied friend appeared. When Kitty took herself home, offended, Missy went out to the remote summerhouse, relieved. She looked back, now, on her morning's careless happiness as an old man looks back on the heyday of his youth.

Heavy with sympathy, non-comprehension and fear, she brooded over these dark, mysterious hints about the handsome Cleveland man; over young Doc's blighted love; over Miss Princess's wanting to “back out”; over old Mrs. Greenleaf's strange, dominant “pride.”

Why did Miss Princess want to “back out”?—Miss Princess with her beautiful coppery hair, and eager parted lips, and eyes of mysterious purple (Missy lingered on the reflection “eyes of mysterious purple” long enough to foreshadow a future poem including that line). Was it because she still loved Doc? If so, why didn't it turn out all right, since Doc loved her, too? Surely that would be better, since there seemed to be something wrong with Mr. Hackett—even though everybody did talk about what a wonderful match he was. Then they talked about invitations and things as though old Mrs. Greenleaf thought those things counted for more than the bridegroom. Old Mrs. Greenleaf, Missy was sure, loved Miss Princess better than anything else in the world: then how could she, even if she was “proud,” twist things so foolishly?

She had brought with her the blue-bound Anthology and a writing-pad and pencil. First she read a little—“Lochinvar” it was she opened to. Then she meditated. Poor Young Doc! The whole unhappy situation was like poetry. (So much in life she was finding, these days, like poetry.) This would make a very sad, but effective poem: the faithful, unhappy lover, the lovely, unhappy bride, the mother keeping them asunder who, though stern, was herself unhappy, and the craven bridegroom who—she hoped it, anyway!—was unhappy also.

In all this unhappiness, though she didn't suspect it, Missy revelled—a peculiar kind of melancholy tuned to the golden day. She detected a subtle restlessness in the shimmering leaves about her; the scent of the June roses caught at something elusively sad in her. Without knowing why, her eyes filled with tears.

She drew the writing-pad to her; conjured the vision of nice Doc and of Miss Princess, and, immersed in a sea of feeling, sought for words and rhyme:

O, young Doctor Al is the pride of the West, Than big flashy autos his Ford is the best; Ah! courtly that lover and faithful and true. And fair, wondrous fair, the maiden was, too. But O—dire the day! when from Cleveland afar—

A long pause here: “car,” “scar,” “jar,”—all tried and discarded. Finally sense, rhyme and meter were attuned:

—afar, A dastard she met, their sweet idyl to mar.

He won her away with his glitter and plume And citified ways, while the lover did fume. O, fair dawned the Wedding Day, pink in the East, And folk from all quarters did come for the feast; Gay banners from turrets—

“Missy!”

The poet, head bent, absorbed in creation, did not hear.

“Missy! Where are you? Me-lis-sa!”

This time the voice cleaved into the mood of inspiration. With a sigh Missy put the pad and pencil in the Anthology, laid the whole on the bench, and obediently went to mind the Baby. But, as she wheeled the perambulator up and down the front walk, her mind liltingly repeated the words she had written, and she stepped along in time to the rhythm. It was a fine rhythm. And, as soon as she was relieved from duty, she rushed back to the temporary shrine of the Muse. The words, now, flowed much more easily than at the beginning—one of the first lessons learned by all creative artists.

Gay banners from turrets streamed out in the air And all Maple, Avenue turned out for the pair. Ah! beauteous was she, that white-satin young bride, But sorrow had reddened her deep purple eyes. Each clatter of hoofs from the courtyard below Did summon the blood swift to ebb and then flow; For the gem on her finger, the flower in her hair, Bound not her sad heart to that Cleveland man there.

Ah! who is this riding so fast through Main Street? The gallant young lover—

Again, reiterant and increasingly imperative, summons from the house slashed across her mood. Can't one's family ever appreciate the yearning for solitude? However, even amid the talkative circle round the supper-table, Missy felt uplifted and strangely remote.

“Why aren't you eating your supper, Missy? Just look at that wasted good meat!”

“Meat,” though a good rhyme for “street,” would not work well. “Neat”—“fleet”—Ah! “Fleet!”

Immediately after supper, followed by the inquisitive Poppylinda, Missy took her poem out to the comparative solitude of the back porch steps. It was very sweet and still out there, the sun sinking blood-red over the cherry trees. With no difficulty at all, she went on, inspired:

—Main Street?

The gallant young Doctor in his motor so fleet! So flashing his eye and so stately his form That the bride's sinking heart with delight did grow warm. But the poor craven bridegroom said never a word; And the parent so proud did champ in her woe.

The knight snatched her swiftly into the Ford, And she smiled as he steered adown the Boulevard; Then away they did race until soon lost to view, And all knew 'twas best for these lovers so true. For where, tell me where, would have gone that bride's bliss? Who flouts at true love all true happiness must miss!

What matters the vain things of Earth, soon or late, If the heart of a loved one in anguish doth break?

When she came to the triumphant close, among the fragrant cherry blooms the birds were twittering their lullabies. She went in to say her own good night, the Poem, much erased and interlined, tucked in the front of her blouse together with ineffable sensations. But she was not, for all that, beyond a certain concern for material details. “Mother, may I do my hair up in kid-curlers?” she asked.

“Why, this is only Wednesday.” Mother's tone connoted the fact that “waves,” rippling artificially either side of Missy's “part” down to her two braids, achieved a decorative effect reserved for Sundays and special events. Then quickly, perhaps because she hadn't been altogether unaware of this last visitation of the Heavenly Muse, she added: “Well, I don't care. Do it up, if you want to.”

Then, moved by some motive of her own, she followed Missy upstairs to do it up herself. These occasions of personal service were rare, these days, since Missy had grown big and efficient, and were therefore deeply cherished. But to-night Missy almost regretted her mother's unexpected ministration; for the paper in her blouse crackled at unwary gestures, and if mother should protract her stay throughout the undressing period, there might come an awkward call for explanations.

And mother, innocently, added one more element to her entangled burden of distress.

“We'll do it up all over your head, for the Wedding,” she said, gently brushing the full length of the fine, silvery-brown strands. “And let it hang in loose curls.”

At the conjectured vision, Missy's eyes began to sparkle.

“And I think a ribbon band the colour of your dress would be pretty,” mother went on, parting off a section and wrapping it round a “curler.” A sudden remembrance clutched at Missy's ecstatic reply; the shine faded from her eyes. But mother, engrossed, didn't observe; more deeply she sank her unintentional barb. “No,” she mused aloud, “a garland of little rosebuds would be better, I believe-tiny delicate little buds, tied with a pink bow.”

At that, the prospective flower-girl, to have saved her life, could not have repressed the sigh which rose like a tidal wave from her overcharged heart. Mother caught the sigh, and looked at her anxiously. “Don't you think it would look pretty?” she asked.

Missy nodded mutely. So complex were her emotions that, fearing for self-control, she was glad, just then, that the Baby cried.

As soon as mother had kissed her good night and left her, she pulled out the paper rustling importantly within her blouse, and laid it in the celluloid “treasure box” which sat on the high-boy. Then soberly she finished the operation on her hair, and undressed herself.

Before getting into bed, after her regular prayer was said, she stayed awhile on her knees and put the whole of her seething dilemma before God. “Dear God,” she said, “you know how unhappy Miss Princess is and young Doc, too. Please make them both happy, God. And please help me not feel sorry about the Pink Dress. For I just can't help feeling sorry. Please help us all, dear God, and I'll be such a good girl, God.”

Perhaps it is the biggest gift in the world, to be able to pray. And, by prayer, is not meant the saying over of a formal code, but the simple, direct speaking with God. It is so simple in the doing, so marvellous in its reaction, that the strange thing is that it is not more generally practiced. But there is where the gift comes in: a supreme essence of spirit which must, if the prayer is to achieve its end, be first possessed-a thing possessed by all children not yet quite rid of the glamour of immortality and by some, older, who contrive to hold enough glamour to be as children throughout life. Some call this thing Faith, but there are other names just as good; and the essence lives on forever.

These reflections are not Missy's. She knelt there, without consciousness of any motive or analysis. She only knew she was telling it all to God. And presently, in her heart, in whispers fainter than the stir of the slumbering leaves outside, she heard His answer. God had heard; she knew it by the peace He laid upon her tumultuous heart.

Steeped in faith, she fell asleep. But not a dreamless sleep. Missy always dreamed, these nights: wonderful dreams—magical, splendid, sometimes vaguely terrifying, often remotely tied up with some event of the day, but always wonderful. And the last dream she dreamed, this eventful night, was marvellous indeed. For it was a replica of the one she had dreamed the night before.

It was an omen of divine portent. No one could have doubted it. Missy, waking from its subtle glamour to the full sunlight streaming across her pillow, hugged Poppylinda, crooned over her and, though preparing to sacrifice that golden something whose prospect had gilded her life, sang her way through the duties of her toilet.

That accomplished, she lifted out her Poem, and wrote at the bottom: “Your true friend, MELISSA M.”

Then she tucked the two sheets in her blouse, and scrambled downstairs to be chided again for not eating her breakfast.

After the last spoonful, obligatory and arduous, had been disposed of, she loitered near the hall telephone until there was a clear field, then called Young Doc's number. What a relief to find he had not yet gone out! Could he stop by her house, pretty soon? Why, what was the matter—Doc's voice was alarmed—someone sick?

“No, but it's something very important, Doc.”

Missy's manner was hurried and impressive.

“Won't it wait?”

“It's terribly important.”

“What is it? Can't you tell me now, Missy?”

“No—it's a secret. And I've got to hurry up now and hang up the phone because it's a secret.”

“I see. All right, I'll be along in about fifteen minutes. What do you want me to—”

“Stop by the summerhouse,” she cut in nervously. “I'll be there.”

It seemed a long time, but in reality was shorter than schedule, before Young Doc's car appeared up the side street. He brought it to a stop opposite the summerhouse, jumped out and approached the rendezvous.

Summoning all her courage, she held the Poem ready in her hand.

“Good morning, Missy,” he sang out. “What's all the mystery?”

For answer Missy could only smile—a smile made wan by nervousness—and extend the two crumpled sheets of paper.

Young Doc took them curiously, smiled at the primly-lettered, downhill lines, and then narrowed his eyes to skimming absorption. A strange expression gathered upon his face as he read. Missy didn't know exactly what to make of his working muscles—whether he was pained or angry or amused. But she was entirely unprepared for the fervour with which, when he finished, he seized her by the shoulders and bounced her up and down.

“Did you make all this up?” he cried. “Or do you mean she really doesn't want to marry that bounder?”

“She really doesn't,” answered Missy, not too engaged in steeling herself against his crunching of her shoulder bones to register the soubriquet, “bounder.”

“Are you sure you didn't make most of it up?” Young Doc knew well Missy's strain of romanticism. But she strove to convince him that, for once, she was by way of being a realist.

“She despises him. She can't bear to go on with it. She can't stand it another hour. I heard her say so myself.” Young Doc, crunching her shoulder bones worse than ever, breathed hard, but said nothing. Missy proffered bashfully:

“I think, maybe, she wants to marry you, Doc.”

Young Doc then, just at the moment she couldn't have borne the vise a second longer, let go her shoulders, and smiled a smile which, for her, would have eased a splintered bone itself.

“We'll quickly find that out,” he said, and his voice was more buoyant than she had heard it in months. “Missy, do you think you could get a note to her right away?”

Missy nodded eagerly.

He scribbled the note on the back of a letter and folded it with the Poem in the used envelope. “There won't be any answer,” he directed Missy, “unless she brings it herself. Just get it to her without anyone's seeing.”

Missy nodded again, vibrant with repressed excitement. “I'll just pretend it's a secret about a poem. Miss Princess always helps make secrets about poems.”

Evidently Miss Princess did so this time. For, after an eternity of ten minutes, Young Doc, peering through the leaves of the summerhouse, saw Missy and her convoy coming across the lawn. Missy was walking along very solemnly, with only an occasional skip to betray the ebullition within her.

But it was on the tall girl that Young Doc's gaze was riveted, the slender graceful figure which, for all its loveliness, had something pathetically drooping about it—like a lily with a storm-bruised stem.

Something in Young Doc's throat clicked, and every last trace of resentment and wounded pride magically dissolved. He went straight to her in the doorway, and for a moment they stood there as if forgetful of everyone else in the world. Neither spoke, as is the way of those whose minds and hearts are full of inarticulate things. Then it was Doc who broke the silence.

“By the way, Missy,” he said in quite an ordinary tone, “there are some of those sugar pills in a bag out in the Ford. You'll find them tucked in a corner of the seat.”

Obediently Missy departed to get the treat. And when she returned, not too quickly, Miss Princess was laughing and crying both at once, and Young Doc was openly squeezing both her hands.

“Missy,” he hailed, “run in and ask your mother if you can go for a ride. Needn't mention Miss Princess is going along.”

O, it is a wonderful world! Swiftly back at the trysting place with the necessary permission, tucked into the Ford between the two happy lovers, “away they did race until soon lost to view.”

And exactly the same happy purpose as that in the Poem! For, half-way down the stretch of Boulevard, Miss Princess squeezed her hand and said:

“We're going over to Somerville, darling, to be married, and you're to be one of the witnesses.”

Missy's heart surged with delight—O, it was a wonderful world! Then a dart of remembrance came, and a big tear spilled out and ran down her cheek. Miss Princess, in the midst of a laugh, looked down and spied it.

“Why, darling, what is it?” she cried anxiously.

“My Pink Dress—I just happened to think of it. But it doesn't really make any difference.” However Missy's eyes were wet and shining with an emotion she couldn't quite control.

With eyes which were shining with many emotions, the man and girl, over her head, regarded each other. It was the man who spoke first, slowing down the car as he did so.

“Don't you think we'd better run back to Miss Martin's and get it?”

For answer, his sweetheart leaned across Missy and kissed him.

A fifteen minutes' delay, and again the Ford was headed towards Somerville and the County Courthouse; but now an additional passenger, a big brown box, was hugged between Missy's knees. In the County Courthouse she did not forget to guard this box tenderly all the time Young Doc and Miss Princess were scurrying around musty offices, interviewing important, shirt-sleeved men, and signing papers—not even when she herself was permitted to sign her name to an imposing document, “just for luck,” as Doc laughingly said.

Then he bent his head to hear what Miss Princess wanted to whisper to him, and they both laughed some more; and then he said something to the shirtsleeved men, and they laughed; and then—O, it is a wonderful world!—Miss Princess took her into a dusty, paper-littered inner office, lifted the Pink Dress out of the box, dressed Missy up in it, fluffed out the “wave” in her front hair, and exclaimed that she was the loveliest little flower-girl in the whole world.

“Even without the flower-hat and the pink stockings?”

“Even without the flower-hat and the pink stockings,” said Miss Princess with such assurance that Missy cast off doubt forever.

After the Wedding—and never in Romance was such a gay, laughing Wedding—when again they were all packed in the Ford, Missy gave a contented sigh.

“I kind of knew it,” she confided. “For I dreamed it all, two nights running. Both times I had on the Pink Dress, and both times it was Doc. I'm so happy it's Doc.”

And over her head the other two looked in each other's eyes.

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER III. LIKE A SINGING BIRD

She was fourteen, going on fifteen; and the world was a fascinating place. There were people who found Cherryvale a dull, poky little town to live in, but not Melissa. Not even in winter, when school and lessons took up so much time that it almost shut out reading and the wonderful dreams which reading is bound to bring you. Yet even school-especially high school the first year-was interesting. The more so when there was a teacher like Miss Smith, who looked too pretty to know so much about algebra and who was said to get a letter every day from a lieutenant-in the Philippines! Then there was ancient history, full of things fascinating enough to make up for algebra and physics. But even physics becomes suddenly thrilling at times. And always literature! Of course “grades” were bothersome, and sometimes you hated to show your monthly report to your parents, who seemed to set so much store by it; and sometimes you almost envied Beulah Crosswhite, who always got an A and who could ask questions which disconcerted even the teachers.

Yes, even school was interesting. However, summertime was best, although then you must practice your music lesson two hours instead of one a day, dust the sitting room, and mind the baby. But you could spend long, long hours in the summerhouse, reading poetry out of the big Anthology and-this a secret-writing poetry yourself! It was heavenly to write poetry. Something soft and warm seemed to ooze through your being as you sat out there and watched the sorrow of a drab, drab sky; or else, on a bright day, a big shining cloud aloft like some silver-gold fairy palace and, down below, the smell of warm, new-cut grass, and whispers of little live things everywhere! It was then that you felt you'd have died if you couldn't have written poetry!

It was on such a lilting day of June, and Melissa's whole being in tune with it, that she was called in to the midday dinner-and received the invitation.

Father had brought it from the post office and handed it to her with exaggerated solemnity. “For Miss Melissa Merriam,” he announced.

Yes! there was her name on the tiny envelope.

And, on the tiny card within, written in a painstaking, cramped hand:

Mr. Raymond Bonner At Home Wednesday June Tenth R.S.V.P. 8 P.M.

With her whole soul in her mouth, which made it quite impossible to speak, she passed the card to her mother and waited. “Oh,” said mother, “an evening party.”

Melissa's soul dropped a trifle: it still clogged her throat, but she was able to form words.

“Oh, mother!”

“You KNOW you're not to ask to go to evening parties, Missy.” Mother's tone was as firm as doom.

Missy turned her eyes to father.

“Don't look at me with those big saucers!” he smiled. “Mother's the judge.”

So Missy turned her eyes back again. “Mother, PLEASE-”

But mother shook her head. “You're too young to begin such things, Missy. I don't know what this town's coming to—mere babies running round at night, playing cards and dancing!”

“But, mother—”

“Don't start teasing, Missy. It won't do any good.”

So Missy didn't start teasing, but her soul remained choking in her throat. It made it difficult for her to swallow, and nothing tasted good, though they had lamb chops, which she adored.

“Eat your meat, Missy,” adjured mother. Missy tried to obey and felt that she was swallowing lumps of lead.

But in the afternoon everything miraculously changed. Kitty Allen and her mother came to call. Kitty was her chum, and lived in the next block, up the hill. Kitty was beautiful, with long curls which showed golden glints in the sun. She had a whim that she and Missy, sometimes, should have dresses made exactly alike-for instance, this summer, their best dresses of pink dotted mull. Missy tried to enjoy the whim with Kitty, but she couldn't help feeling sad at seeing how much prettier Kitty could look in the same dress. If only she had gold-threaded curls!

During the call the party at the Bonners' was mentioned. Mrs. Allen was going to “assist” Mrs. Bonner. She suggested that Missy might accompany Kitty and herself.

“I hadn't thought of letting Missy go,” said Mrs. Merriam. “She seems so young to start going out evenings that way.”

“I know just how you feel,” replied Mrs. Allen. “I feel just the same way. But as long as I've got to assist, I'm willing Kitty should go this time; and I thought you mightn't object to Missy's going along with us.”

“Oh, mother!” Missy's tone was a prayer.

And her mother, smiling toward her a charming, tolerant smile as if to say: “Well, what can one do in the face of those eyes?” finally assented.

After that the afternoon went rushing by on wings of joy. When the visitors departed Missy had many duties to perform, but they were not dull, ordinary duties; they were all tinted over with rainbow colours. She stemmed strawberries in the kitchen where Marguerite, the hired girl, was putting up fruit, and she loved the pinkish-red and grey-green of the berries against the deep yellow of the bowl. She loved, too, the colour of the geraniums against the green-painted sill just beside her. And the sunlight making leafwork brocade on the grass out the window! There were times when combinations of colour seemed the most beautiful thing in the world.

Then she had to mind the baby for a while, and she took him out on the side lawn and pretended to play croquet with him. The baby wasn't quite three, and it was delicious to see him, with mallet and ball before a wicket, trying to mimic the actions of his elders. Poppylinda, Missy's big black cat, wanted to play too, and succeeded in getting between the baby's legs and upsetting him. But the baby was under a charm; he only picked himself up and laughed. And Missy was sure that black Poppy also laughed.

That night at supper she didn't have much chance to talk to father about the big event, for he had brought an old friend home to supper. Missy was rather left out of the conversation. She felt glad for that; it is hard to talk to old people; it is hard to express to them the thoughts and feelings that possess you. Besides, to-night she didn't want to talk to anyone, nor to listen. She only wanted to sit immersed in that soft, warm, fluttering deliciousness.

Just as the meal was over the hall telephone rang and, at a sign from mother, she excused herself to answer it. From outside the door she heard father's friend say: “What beautiful eyes!” Could he be speaking of her?

The evening, as the afternoon had been, was divine. When Missy was getting ready for bed she leaned out of the window to look at the night, and the fabric of her soul seemed to stretch out and mingle with all that dark, luminous loveliness. It seemed that she herself was a part of the silver moon high up there, a part of the white, shining radiance which spread down and over leaves and grass everywhere. The strong, damp scent of the ramblers on the porch seemed to be her own fragrant breath, and the black shadows pointing out from the pine trees were her own blots of sadness—sadness vague and mysterious, with more of pleasure in it than pain.

She could hardly bear to leave this mysterious, fascinating night; to leave off thinking the big, vague thoughts the night always called forth; but she had to light the gas and set about the business of undressing.

But, first, she paused to gaze at herself in the looking-glass. For the millionth time she wished she were pretty like Kitty Allen. And Kitty would wear her pink dotted mull to the party. Missy sighed.

Then meditatively she unbraided her long, mouse-coloured braids; twisted them into tentative loops over her ears; earnestly studied the effect. No; her hair was too straight and heavy. She tried to imagine undulating waves across her forehead-if only mother would let her use crimpers! Perhaps she would! And then, perhaps, she wouldn't look so plain. She wished she were not so plain; the longing to be pretty made her fairly ache.

Then slowly the words of that man crept across her memory: “What beautiful eyes!” Could he have meant her? She stared at the eyes which stared back from the looking-glass till she had the odd sensation that they were something quite strange and Allen to her: big, dark, deep, and grave eyes, peering out from some unknown consciousness. And they were beautiful eyes!

Suddenly she was awakened from her dreams by a voice at the door: “Missy, why in the world haven't you gone to bed?”

Missy started and blushed as though discovered in mischief.

“What have you been doing with your hair?”

“Oh, just experimenting. Mother, may I have it crimped for the party?”

“I don't know—we'll see. Now hurry and jump into bed.”

After mother had kissed her good night and gone, and after the light had been turned out, Missy lay awake for a long time.

Through the lace window curtains shone the moonlight, a gleaming path along which Missy had often flown out to be a fairy. It is quite easy to be a fairy. You lie perfectly still, your arms stretched out like wings. Then you fix your eyes on the moonlight and imagine you feel your wings stir. And the first thing you know you feel yourself being wafted through the window, up through the silver-tinged air. You touch the clouds with your magic wand, and from them fall shimmering jewels.

Missy was fourteen, going on fifteen, but she could still play being a fairy.

But to-night, though the fairy path stretched invitingly to her very bed, she did not ride out upon it. She shut her eyes, though she felt wide-awake. She shut her eyes so as to see better the pictures that came before them.

With her eyes shut she could see herself quite plainly at the party. She looked like herself, only much prettier. Yes, and a little older, perhaps. Her pink dotted mull was easily recognizable, though it had taken on a certain ethereally chic quality—as if a rosy cloud had been manipulated by French fingers. Her hair was a soft, bright, curling triumph. And when she moved she was graceful as a swaying flower stem.

As Missy watched this radiant being which was herself she could see that she was as gracious and sweet-mannered as she was beautiful; perhaps a bit dignified and reserved, but that is always fitting.

No wonder the other girls and the boys gathered round her, captivated. All the boys were eager to dance with her, and when she danced she reminded you of a swaying lily. Most often her partner was Raymond himself. Raymond danced well too. And he was the handsomest boy at his party. He had blonde hair and deep, soft black eyes like his father, who was the handsomest as well as the richest man in Cherryvale. And he liked her, for last year, their first year in high school, he used to study the Latin lesson with her and wait for her after school and carry her books home for her. He had done that although Kitty Allen was much prettier than she and though Beulah Crosswhite was much, much smarter. The other girls had teased her about him, and the boys must have teased Raymond, for after a while he had stopped walking home with her. She didn't know whether she was gladder or sorrier for that. But she knew that she was glad he did not ignore that radiant, pink-swathed guest who, in her beautiful vision, was having such a glorious time at his party.

Next morning she awoke to find a soft, misty rain greying the world outside her window. Missy did not mind that; she loved rainy days—they made you feel so pleasantly sad. For a time she lay quiet, watching the slant, silvery threads and feeling mysteriously, fascinatingly, at peace. Then Poppy, who always slept at the foot of her bed, awoke with a tremendous yawning and stretching—exactly the kind of “exercises” that young Doc Alison prescribed for father, who hated to get up in the mornings!

Then Poppy, her exercises done, majestically trod the coverlet to salute her mistress with the accustomed matinal salutation which Missy called a kiss. Mother did not approve of Poppy's “kisses,” but Missy argued to herself that the morning one, dependable as an alarm clock, kept her from oversleeping.

She hugged Poppy, jumped out of bed, and began dressing. When she got downstairs breakfast was ready and the house all sweetly diffused with the dreamy shadows that come with a rainy day.

Father had heard the great news and bantered her: “So we've got a society queen in our midst!”

“I think,” put in Aunt Nettie, “that it's disgraceful the way they put children forward these days.”

“I wouldn't let Missy go if Mrs. Allen wasn't going to be there to look after her,” said mother.

“Mother, may I have the hem of my pink dress let down?” asked Missy.

At that father laughed, and Aunt Nettie might just as well have said: “I told you so!” as put on that expression.

“It's my first real party,” Missy went on, “and I'd like to look as pretty as I can.”

Something prompted father, as he rose from the table, to pause and lay his hand on Missy's shoulder.

“Can't you get her a new ribbon or something, mother?” he asked.

“Maybe a new sash,” answered mother reflectively. “They've got some pretty brocaded pink ribbon at Bonner's.”

After which Missy finished her breakfast in a rapture. It is queer how you can eat, and like what you eat very much, and yet scarcely taste it at all.

When the two hours of practicing were over, mother sent her down town to buy the ribbon for the sash—a pleasant errand. She changed the black tie on her middy blouse to a scarlet one and let the ends fly out of her grey waterproof cape. Why is it that red is such a divine colour on a rainy day?

Upon her return there was still an hour before dinner, and she sat by the dining-room window with Aunt Nettie, to darn stockings.

“Well, Missy,” said Aunt Nettie presently, “a penny for your thoughts.”

Missy looked up vaguely, at a loss. “I wasn't thinking of anything exactly,” she said.

“What were you smiling about?”

“Was I smiling?”

Just then mother entered and Aunt Nettie said: “Missy smiles, and doesn't know it. Party!”

But Missy knew it wasn't the party entirely. Nor was it entirely the sound of the rain swishing, nor the look of the trees quietly weeping, nor of the vivid red patches of geranium beds. Everything could have been quite different, and still she'd have felt happy. Her feeling, mysteriously, was as much from things INSIDE her as from things outside.

After dinner was over and the baby minded for an hour, mother made the pink-brocaded sash. It was very lovely. Then she had an hour to herself, and since the rain wouldn't permit her to spend it in the summerhouse, she took a book up to her own room. It was a book of poems from the Public Library.

The first poem she opened to was one of the most marvellous things she had ever read—almost as wonderful as “The Blessed Damozel.” She was glad she had chanced upon it on a rainy day, and when she felt like this. It was called “A Birthday,” and it went:

My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it with doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work in it gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys, Because the birthday of my life Is come; my love is come to me.

The poem expressed beautifully what she might have answered when Aunt Nettie asked why she smiled. Only, even though she herself could have expressed it so beautifully then, it was not the kind of answer you'd dream of making to Aunt Nettie.

The next morning Missy awoke to find the rain gone and warm, golden sunshine filtering through the lace curtains. She dressed herself quickly, while the sunshine smiled and watched her toilet. After breakfast, at the piano, her fingers found the scales tiresome. Of themselves they wandered off into unexpected rhythms which seemed to sing aloud: Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys... Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes...

She was idly wondering what a “vair” might be when her dreams were crashed into by mother's reproving voice: “Missy, what are you doing? If you don't get right down to practicing, there'll be no more parties!”

Abashed, Missy made her fingers behave, but not her heart. It was singing a tune far out of harmony with chromatic exercises, and she was glad her mother could not hear.

The tune kept right on throughout dinner. During the meal she was called to the telephone, and at the other end was Raymond; he wanted her to save him the first dance that evening. What rapture—this was what happened to the beautiful belles you read about!

After dinner mother and Aunt Nettie went to call upon some ladies they hoped wouldn't be at home—what funny things grown-ups do! The baby was taking his nap, and Missy had a delicious long time ahead in which to be utterly alone.

She took the library book of poems and a book of her father's out to the summerhouse. First she opened the book of her father's. It was a translation of a Russian book, very deep and moving and sad and incomprehensible. A perfectly fascinating book! It always filled her with vague, undefinable emotions. She read: “O youth, youth! Thou carest for nothing: thou possessest, as it were, all the treasures of the universe; even sorrow comforts thee, even melancholy becomes thee; thou art self-confident and audacious; thou sayest: 'I alone live—behold!' But the days speed on and vanish without a trace and without reckoning, and everything vanishes in thee, like wax in the sun, like snow...”

Missy felt sublime sadness resounding through her soul. It was intolerable that days should speed by irrevocably and vanish, like wax in the sun, like snow. She sighed. But even as she sighed the feeling of sadness began to slip away. So she turned to the poem discovered last night, and read it over happily.

The title, “A Birthday,” made her feel that Raymond Bonner was somehow connected with it. This was his birthday—and that brought her thoughts back definitely to the party. Mother had said that presents were not expected, that they were getting too big to exchange little presents, yet she would have liked to carry him some little token. The ramblers and honeysuckle above her head sniffed at her in fragrant suggestion—why couldn't she just take him some flowers?

Acting on the impulse, Missy jumped up and began breaking off the loveliest blooms. But after she had gathered a big bunch a swift wave of self-consciousness swept over her. What would they say at the house? Would they let her take them? Would they understand? And a strong distaste for their inevitable questions, for the explanations which she could not explain definitely even to herself, prompted her not to carry the bouquet to the house. Instead she ran, got a pitcher of water, carried it back to the summerhouse and left the flowers temporarily there, hoping to figure out ways and means later.

At the house she discovered that the baby was awake, so she had to hurry back to take care of him. She always loved to do that; she didn't mind that a desire to dress up in her party attire had just struck her, for the baby always entered into the spirit of her performances. While she was fastening up the pink dotted mull, Poppy walked inquisitively in and sat down to oversee this special, important event. Missy succeeded with the greatest difficulty in adjusting the brocaded sash to her satisfaction. She regretted her unwaved hair, but mother was going to crimp it herself in the evening. The straight, everyday coiffure marred the picture in the mirror, yet, aided by her imagination, it was pleasing. She stood with arms extended in a languid, graceful pose, her head thrown back, gazing with half-closed eyes at something far, far beyond her own eyes in the glass.

Then suddenly she began to dance. She danced with her feet, her arms, her hands, her soul. She felt within her the grace of stately beauties, the heartbeat of dew-jewelled fairies, the longings of untrammelled butterflies—dancing, she could have flown up to heaven at that moment! A gurgle of sound interrupted her; it was the baby. “Do you like me, baby?” she cried. “Am I beautiful, baby?”

Baby, now, could talk quite presentably in the language of grown-ups. But in addition he knew all kinds of wise, unintelligible words. Missy knew that they were wise, even though she could not understand their meaning, and she was glad the baby chose, this time, to answer in that secret jargon.

She kissed the baby and, in return, the baby smiled his secret smile. Missy was sure that Poppy then smiled too, a secret smile; so she kissed Poppy also. How wonderful, how mysterious, were the smiles of baby and Poppy! What unknown thoughts produced them?

At this point her cogitations were interrupted and her playacting spoiled by the unexpected return of mother and Aunt Nettie. It seemed that certain of the ladies had obligingly been “out.”

“What in the world are you doing, Missy?” asked mother.

Missy suddenly felt herself a very foolish-appearing object in her party finery. She tried to make an answer, but the right words were difficult to find.

“Party!” said Aunt Nettie significantly.

Missy, still standing in mute embarrassment, couldn't have explained how it was not the party entirely.

Mother did not scold her for dressing up.

“Better get those things off, dear,” she said kindly, “and come in and let me curl your hair. I'd better do it before supper, before the baby gets cross.” The crimped coiffure was an immense success; even in her middy blouse Missy felt transformed. She could have kissed herself in the glass!

“Do you think I look pretty, mother?” she asked. “You mustn't think of such things, dear.” But, as mother stooped to readjust a waving lock, her fingers felt marvellously tender to Missy's forehead.

Evening arrived with a sunset of grandeur and glory. It made everything look as beautiful as it should look on the occasion of a festival. The beautiful and festive aspect of the world without, and of, her heart within, made it difficult to eat supper. And after supper it was hard to breathe naturally, to control her nervous fingers as she dressed.

At last, with the help of mother and Aunt Nettie, her toilet was finished: the pink-silk stockings and slippers shimmering beneath the lengthened pink mull; the brocaded pink ribbon now become a huge, pink-winged butterfly; and, mother's last touch, a pink rosebud holding a tendril—a curling tendril—artfully above the left ear! Missy felt a stranger to herself as, like some gracious belle and fairy princess and airy butterfly all compounded into one, she walked—no, floated down the stairs.

“Well!” exclaimed father, “behold the Queen of the Ball!” But Missy did not mind his bantering tone. The expression of his eyes told her that he thought she looked pretty.

Presently Mrs. Allen and Kitty, in the Allens' surrey, stopped by for her. With them was a boy she had never seen before, a tall, dark boy in a blue-grey braided coat and white duck trousers—a military cadet!

He was introduced as Kitty's cousin, Jim Henley. Missy had heard about this Cousin Jim who was going to visit Cherryvale some time during the summer; he had arrived rather unexpectedly that day.

Kitty herself—in pink dotted mull, of course—was looking rather wan. Mrs. Allen explained she had eaten too much of the candy Cousin Jim had brought her.

Cousin Jim, with creaking new shoes, leaped down to help Missy in. She had received her mother's last admonition, her father's last banter, Aunt Nettie's last anxious peck at her sash, and was just lifting her foot to the surrey step when suddenly she said: “Oh!”

“What is it?” asked mother. “Forgotten something?”

Missy had forgotten something. But how, with mother's inquiring eyes upon her, and father's and Aunt Nettie's and Mrs. Allen's and Kitty's and Cousin Jim's inquiring eyes upon her, could she mention Raymond's bouquet in the summerhouse? How could she get them? What should she say? And what would they think? “No,” she answered hesitantly. “I guess not.” But the bright shining of her pleasure was a little dimmed. She could not forget those flowers waiting, waiting there in the summerhouse. She worried more about them, so pitifully abandoned, than she did about Raymond's having to go without a remembrance.

Missy sat in the back seat with Mrs. Allen, Kitty in front with her cousin. Now and then he threw a remark over his shoulder, and smiled. He had beautiful white teeth which gleamed out of his dark-skinned face, and he seemed very nice. But he wasn't as handsome as Raymond, nor as nice—even if he did wear a uniform.

When they reached the Bonners they saw it all illumined for the party. The Bonners' house was big and square with a porch running round three sides, the most imposing house in Cherryvale. Already strings of lanterns were lighted on the lawn, blue and red and yellow orbs. The lights made the trees and shrubs seem shadowy and remote, mysterious creatures a-whisper over their own business.

Not yet had many guests arrived, but almost immediately they appeared in such droves that it seemed they must have come up miraculously through the floor. The folding camp chairs which lined the parlours and porches (the rented chairs always seen at Cherryvale parties and funerals) were one moment starkly exposed and the next moment hidden by light-hued skirts and by stiffly held, Sunday-trousered dark legs. For a while that stiffness which inevitably introduces a formal gathering of youngsters held them unnaturally bound. But just as inevitably it wore away, and by the time the folding chairs were drawn up round the little table where “hearts” were to be played, voices were babbling, and laughter was to be heard everywhere for no reason at all.

At Missy's table sat Raymond Bonner, looking handsomer than ever with his golden hair and his eyes like black velvet pansies. There was another boy who didn't count; and then there was the most striking creature Missy had ever seen. She was a city girl visiting in town, an older, tall, red-haired girl, with languishing, long-lashed eyes. She wore a red chiffon dress, lower cut than was worn in Cherryvale, which looked like a picture in a fashion magazine. But it was not her chic alone that made her so striking. It was her manner. Missy was, not sure that she knew what “sophisticated” meant, but she decided that the visiting girl's air of self-possession, of calm, almost superior assurance, denoted sophistication. How eloquent was that languid way of using her fan!

In this languishing-eyed presence she herself did not feel at her best; nor was she made happier by the way Raymond couldn't keep his eyes off the visitor. She played her hand badly, so that Raymond and his alluring partner “progressed” to the higher table while she remained with the boy who didn't count. But, as luck would have it, to take the empty places, from the head table, vanquished, came Cousin Jim and his partner. Jim now played opposite her, and laughed over his “dumbness” at the game.

“I feel sorry for you!” he told Missy. “I'm a regular dub at this game!”

“I guess I'm a 'dub' too.” It was impossible not to smile back at that engaging flash of white teeth in the dark face.

This time, however, neither of them proved “dubs.” Together they “progressed” to the next higher table. Cousin Jim assured her it was all due to her skill. She almost thought that, perhaps, she was skillful at “hearts,” and for the first time she liked the silly game.

Eventually came time for the prizes—and then dancing. Dancing Missy liked tremendously. Raymond claimed her for the first waltz. Missy wondered, a little wistfully, whether now he mightn't be regretting that pre-engagement, whether he wouldn't rather dance it with the languishing-eyed girl he was following about.

But as soon as the violin and piano, back near the library window, began to play, Raymond came straight to Missy and made his charming bow. They danced through the two parlours and then out to the porch and round its full length; the music carried beautifully through the open windows; it was heavenly dancing outdoors like that. Too soon it was over.

“Will you excuse me?” Raymond asked in his polite way. “Mother wants to see me about something. I hate to run away, but—”

Scarcely had he gone when Mrs. Allen, with Jim in tow, came hurrying up.

“Oh, Missy! I've been looking for you everywhere. Kitty's awfully sick. She was helping with the refreshments and got hold of some pickles. And on top of all that candy—”

“Oh!” commiserated Missy.

“I've got to get her home at once,” Mrs. Allen went on. “I hate to take you away just when your good time's beginning, but—”

“Why does she have to go?” Jim broke in. “I can take you and Kitty home, and then come back, and take her home after the party's over.” He gave a little laugh. “You see that gives me an excuse to see the party through myself!”

Mrs. Allen eyed Missy a little dubiously.

“Oh, Mrs. Allen, couldn't I?”

“I don't know—I said I'd bring you home myself.”

“Oh, Mrs. Allen! Please!” Missy's eyes pleaded even more than her voice.

“Well, I don't see why not,” decided Kitty's mother, anxious to return to her own daughter. “Jim will take good care of you, and Mrs. Bonner will send you all home early.”

When Mrs. Allen, accompanied by her nephew, had hurried away, Missy had an impulse to wander alone, for a moment, out into the deliciously alluring night. She loved the night always, but just now it looked indescribably beautiful. The grounds were deserted, but the lanterns, quivering in the breeze, seemed to be huge live glow-worms suspended up there in the dark. It was enchantment. Stepping lightly, holding her breath, sniffing at unseen scents, hearing laughter and dance music from far away as if in another world, she penetrated farther and farther into the shadows. An orange-coloured moon was pushing its way over the horizon, so close she could surely reach out her hands and touch it!

And then, too near to belong to any other world, and quite distinctly, she heard a voice beyond the rose arbour:

“Oh, yes! Words sound well! But the fact remains you didn't ask me for the first dance.”

Missy knew that drawling yet strangely assured voice. Almost, with its tones, she could see the languorously uplifted eyes, the provoking little gesture of fan at lips. Before she could move, whether to advance or to flee, Raymond replied:

“I wanted to ask you—you know I wanted to ask you!”

“Oh, yes, you did!” replied the visiting girl ironically.

“I did!” protested Raymond.

“Well, why didn't you then?”

“I'd already asked somebody else. I couldn't!”

And then the visiting girl laughed strangely. Missy knew she knew with whom Raymond had danced that first dance. Why did she laugh? And Raymond—oh, oh! She had seemed to grow rooted to the ground, unable to get away; her heart, her breathing, seemed to petrify too; they hurt her. Why had Raymond danced with her if he didn't want to? And why, why did that girl laugh? She suddenly felt that she must let them know that she heard them, that she must ask why! And, in order not to exclaim the question against her will, she covered her mouth with both hands, and crept silently away from the rose arbour.

Without any definite purpose, borne along by an inner whirlwind of suppressed sobs and utter despair, Missy finally found herself nearer the entrance gate, Fortunately there was nobody to see her; everyone—except those two—was back up there in the glare and noise, laughing and dancing. Laughing and dancing—oh, oh! What ages ago it seemed when she too had laughed and danced!

Oh, why hadn't she gone home with Mrs. Allen and Kitty before her silly pleasure had turned to anguish? But, of course, that was what life was: pain crowding elbows with pleasure always—she had read that somewhere. She was just inevitably living Life.

Consoled a trifle by this reflection and by a certain note of sublimity in her experience, Missy leaned against the gatepost upon which a lantern was blinking its last shred of life, and gazed at the slow-rising, splendid moon.

She was still there when Cousin Jim, walking quickly and his shoes creaking loudly, returned. “Hello!” he said. “What're you doing out here?”

“Oh, just watching the moon.”

“You're a funny girl,” he laughed.

“Why am I funny?” Her tone was a little wistful. “Why, moon-gazing instead of dancing, and everything.”

“But I like to dance too,” emphasized Missy, as if to defend herself against a charge.

“I'll take you up on that. Come straight in and dance the next dance with me!”

Missy obeyed. And then she knew that she had met the Dancer of the World. At first she was pleased that her steps fitted his so well, and then she forgot all about steps and just floated along, on invisible gauzy wings, unconscious of her will of direction, of his will of direction. There was nothing in the world but invisible gauzy wings, which were herself and Jim and the music. And they were a part of the music and the music was a part of them. It was divine.

“Say, you can dance!” said Jim admiringly when the music stopped.

“I love to dance.”

“I should say you might! You dance better than any girl I ever danced with!”

This, from a military uniform, was praise indeed. Missy blushed and was moved to hide her exaltation under modesty.

“I guess the reason is because I love it so much. I feel as if it's the music dancing—not me. Do you feel it that way?” “Never thought of it that way,” answered Jim. “But I don't know but what you're right. Say, you ARE a funny girl, aren't you?”

But Missy knew that whatever he meant by her being a “funny girl” he didn't dislike her for it, because he rushed on: “You must let me have a lot of dances—every one you can spare.”

After that everything was rapture. All the boys liked to dance with Missy because she was such a good dancer, and Jim kept wanting to cut in to get an extra dance with her himself. Somehow even the sting of the visiting girl's laugh and of Raymond's defection seemed to have subsided into triviality. And when Raymond came up to ask for a dance she experienced a new and pleasurable thrill in telling him she was already engaged. That thrill disturbed her a little. Was it possible that she was vindictive, wicked? But when she saw Jim approaching while Raymond was receiving his conge, she thrilled again, simultaneously wondering whether she was, after all, but a heartless coquette.

Jim had just been dancing with the visiting girl, so she asked: “Is Miss Slade a good dancer?”

“Oh, fair. Not in it with you though.”

Missy thrilled again, and felt wicked again—alas, how pleasant is wickedness! “She's awfully pretty,” vouchsafed Missy.

“Oh, I guess so”—indifferently.

Yet another thrill.

They took refreshments together, Jim going to get her a second glass of lemonade and waiting upon her with devotion. Then came the time to go home. Missy could not hold back a certain sense of triumph as, after thanking Raymond for a glorious time, she started off, under his inquisitive eye, arm in arm with Jim.

That unwonted arm-in-arm business confused Missy a good deal. She had an idea it was the proper thing when one is being escorted home, and had put her arm in his as a matter of course, but before they had reached the gate she was acutely conscious of the touch of her arm on his. To make matters worse, a curious wave of embarrassment was creeping over her; she couldn't think of anything to say, and they had walked nearly a block down moon-flooded Silver Street, with no sound but Jim's creaking shoes, before she got out: “How do you like Cherry vale, Mr. Henley?”

“Looks good to me,” he responded.

Then silence again, save for Jim's shoes. Missy racked her brains. What do you say to boys who don't know the same people and affairs you do? Back there at the party things had gone easily, but they were playing cards or dancing or eating; there had been no need for tete-a-tete conversation. How do you talk to people you don't know?

She liked Jim, but the need to make talk was spoiling everything. She moved along beside his creaking shoes as in a nightmare, and, as she felt every atom of her freezing to stupidity, she desperately forced her voice: “What a beautiful night it is!”

“Yes, it's great.”

Missy sent him a sidelong glance. He didn't look exactly happy either. Did he feel awkward too?

Creak! creak! creak! said the shoes.

“Listen to those shoes—never heard 'em squeak like that before,” he muttered apologetically.

Missy, striving for a proper answer and finding none, kept on moving through that feeling of nightmare. What was the matter with her tongue, her brain? Was it because she didn't know Jim well enough to talk to him? Surely not, for she had met strange boys before and not felt like this. Was it because it was night? Did you always feel like this when you were all dressed up and going home from an evening party?

Creak! creak! said the shoes.

Another block lay behind them.

Missy, fighting that sensation of stupidity, in anguished resolution spoke again: “Just look at the moon—how big it is!” Jim followed her upward glance. “Yes, it's great,” he agreed.

Creak! creak! said the shoes.

A heavy, regularly punctuated pause. “Don't you love moonlight nights?” persisted Missy.

“Yes—when my shoes don't squeak.” He tried to laugh.

Missy tried to laugh too. Creak! creak! said the shoes.

Another block lay behind them.

“Moonlight always makes me feel—”

She paused. What was it moonlight always made her feel? Hardly hearing what she was saying, she made herself reiterate banalities about the moon. Her mind flew upward to the moon—Jim's downward to his squeaking shoes. She lived at the other end of town from Raymond Bonner's house, and the long walk was made up of endless intermittent perorations on the moon, on squeaking shoes. But the song of the shoes never ceased. Louder and louder it waxed. It crashed into the innermost fibres of her frame, completely deafened her mental processes. Never would she forget it: creak-creak-creak-creak!

And the moon, usually so kind and gentle, grinned down derisively.

At last, after eons, they reached the corner of her own yard. How unchanged, how natural everything looked here! Over there, across the stretch of white moonlight, sat the summerhouse, symbol of peace and every day, cloaked in its fragrant ramblers.

Ramblers! A sudden remembrance darted through Missy's perturbed brain. Her poor flowers—were they still out there? She must carry them into the house with her! On the impulse, without pausing to reflect that her action might look queer, she exclaimed: “Wait a minute!” and ran fleetly across the moonlit yard. In a second she had the bouquet out of the pitcher and was back again beside him, breathless.

“I left them out there,” she said. “I—I forgot them. And I didn't want to leave them out there all night.”

Jim bent down and sniffed at the roses. “They smell awfully sweet, don't they?” he said.

Suddenly, without premeditation, Missy extended them to him. “You may have them,” she offered.

“I?” He received them awkwardly. “That's awfully sweet of you. Say, you are sweet, aren't you?”

“You may have them if you want them,” she repeated.

Jim, still holding the bunch awkwardly, had an inspiration.

“I do want them. And now, if they're really mine, I want to do with them what I'd like most to do with them. May I?”

“Why, of course.”

“I'd like to give them to the girl who ought to have flowers more than any girl I know. I'd like to give them to you!”

He smiled at her daringly.

“Oh!” breathed Missy. How poetical he was!

“But,” he stipulated, “on one condition. I demand one rose for myself. And you must put it in my buttonhole for me.”

With trembling fingers Missy fixed the rose in place.

They walked on up to the gate. Jim said: “In our school town the girls are all crazy for brass buttons. They make hatpins and things. If you'd like a button, I'd like to give you one—off my sleeve.”

“Wouldn't it spoil your sleeve?” she asked tremulously.

“Oh, I can get more”—somewhat airily. “Of course we have to do extra guard mount and things for punishment. But that's part of the game, and no fellow minds if he's giving buttons to somebody he likes.”

Missy wasn't exactly sure she knew what “subtle” meant, but she felt that Jim was being subtle. Oh, the romance of it! To give her a brass button he was willing to suffer punishment. He was like a knight of old!

As Jim was severing the button with his penknife, Missy, chancing to glance upward, noted that the curtain of an upstairs window was being held back by an invisible hand. That was her mother's window.

“I must go in now,” she said hurriedly. “Mother's waiting up for me.”

“Well I guess I'll see you soon. You're up at Kitty's a lot, aren't you?”

“Yes,” she murmured, one eye on the upstairs window. So many things she had to say now. A little while ago she hadn't been able to talk. Now, for no apparent reason, there was much to say, yet no time to say it. How queer Life was!

“To-morrow, I expect,” she hurried on. “Good night, Mr. Henley.” “Good night—Missy.” With his daring, gleaming smile.

Inside the hall door, mother, wrapper-clad, met her disapprovingly. “Missy, where in the world did you get all those flowers?”

“Ji—Kitty's cousin gave them to me.”

“For the land's sake!” It required a moment for mother to find further words. Then she continued accusingly: “I thought you were to come home with Mrs. Allen and Kitty.”

“Kitty got sick, and her mother had to take her home.”

“Why didn't you come with them?”

“Oh, mother! I was having such a good time!” For the minute Missy had forgotten there had been a shred of anything but “good time” in the whole glorious evening. “And Mrs. Allen said I might stay and come home with Jim and—”

“That will do,” cut in mother severely. “You've taken advantage of me, Missy. And don't let me hear evening party from you again this summer!”

The import of this dreadful dictum did not penetrate fully to Missy's consciousness. She was too confused in her emotions, just then, to think clearly of anything.

“Go up to bed,” said mother.

“May I put my flowers in water first?”

“Yes, but be quick about it.”

Missy would have liked to carry the flowers up to her own room, to sleep there beside her while she slept, but mother wouldn't understand and there would be questions which she didn't know how to answer.

Mother was offended with her. Dimly she felt unhappy about that, but she was too happy to be definitely unhappy. Anyway, mother followed to unfasten her dress, to help take down her hair, to plait the mouse-coloured braids. She wanted to be alone, yet she liked the touch of mother's hands, unusually gentle and tender. Why was mother gentle and tender with her when she was offended?

At last mother kissed her good night, and she was alone in her little bed. It was hard to get to sleep. What an eventful party it had been! Since supper time she seemed to have lived years and years. She had been a success even though Raymond Bonner had said—that. Anyway, Jim was a better dancer than Raymond, and handsomer and nicer—besides the uniform. He was more poetical too—much more. What was it he had said about liking her?... better dancer than any other... Funny she should feel so happy after Raymond... Maybe she was just a vain, inconstant, coquettish...

She strove to focus on the possibility of her frailty. She turned her face to the window. Through the lace curtains shone the moonlight, the gleaming path along which she had so often flown out to be a fairy. But to-night she didn't wish to be a fairy; just to be herself...

The moonlight flowed in and engulfed her, a great, eternal, golden-white mystery. And its mystery became her mystery. She was the mystery of the moon, of the universe, of Life. And the tune in her heart, which could take on so many bewildering variations, became the Chant of Mystery. How interesting, how tremendously, ineffably interesting was Life! She slept.

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER IV. MISSY TACKLES ROMANCE

Melissa was out in the summerhouse, reading; now and then lifting her eyes from the big book on her lap to watch the baby at play. With a pail of sand, a broken lead-pencil and several bits of twig, the baby had concocted an engrossing game. Melissa smiled indulgently at his absurd absorption; while the baby, looking up, smiled back as one who would say: “What a stupid game reading is to waste your time with!”

For the standpoint of three-years-old is quite different from that of fourteen-going-on-fifteen. Missy now felt almost grown-up; it had been eons since SHE was a baby, and three; even thirteen lay back across a chasm so wide her thoughts rarely tried to bridge it. Besides, her thoughts were kept too busy with the present. Every day the world was presenting itself as a more bewitching place. Cherryvale had always been a thrilling place to live in; but this was the summer which, surely, would ever stand out in italics in her mind. For, this summer, she had come really to know Romance.

Her more intimate acquaintance with this enchanting phenomenon had begun in May, the last month of school, when she learned that Miss Smith, her Algebra teacher, received a letter every day from an army officer. An army officer!—and a letter every day! And she knew Miss Smith very well, indeed! Ecstasy! Miss Smith, who looked too pretty to know so much about Algebra, made an adorable heroine of Romance.

But she was not more adorable-looking than Aunt Isabel. Aunt Isabel was Uncle Charlie's wife, and lived in Pleasanton; Missy was going to Pleasanton in just three days, now, and every time she thought of the visit, she felt delicious little tremors of anticipation. What an experience that would be! For father and mother and grandpa and grandma and all the other family grown-ups admitted that Uncle Charlie's marriage to Aunt Isabel was romantic. Uncle Charlie had been forty-three—very, very old, even older than father—and a “confirmed bachelor” when, a year ago last summer, he had married Aunt Isabel. Aunt Isabel was much younger, only twenty; that was what made the marriage romantic.

Like Miss Smith, Aunt Isabel had big violet eyes and curly golden hair. Most heroines seemed to be like that. The reflection saddened Missy. Her own eyes were grey instead of violet, her hair straight and mouse-coloured instead of wavy and golden.

Even La Beale Isoud was a blonde, and La Beale Isoud, as she had recently discovered, was one of the Romantic Queens of all time. She knew this fact on the authority of grandpa, who was enormously wise. Grandpa said that the beauteous lady was a heroine in all languages, and her name was spelled Iseult, and Yseult, and Isolde, and other queer ways; but in “The Romance of King Arthur” it was spelled La Beale Isoud. “The Romance of King Arthur” was a fascinating book, and Missy was amazed that, up to this very summer, she had passed by the rather ponderous volume, which was kept on the top shelf of the “secretary,” as uninteresting-looking. Uninteresting!

It was “The Romance of King Arthur” that, this July afternoon, lay open on Missy's lap while she minded the baby in the summerhouse. Already she knew by heart its “deep” and complicated story, and, now, she was re-reading the part which told of Sir Tristram de Liones and his ill-fated love for La Beale Isoud. It was all very sad, yet very beautiful.

Sir Tristram was a “worshipful knight” and a “harper passing all other.” He got wounded, and his uncle, King Mark, “let purvey a fair vessel, well victualled,” and sent him to Ireland to be healed. There the Irish King's daughter, La Beale Isoud, “the fairest maid and lady in the world,” nursed him back to health, while Sir Tristram “learned her to harp.”

That last was an odd expression. In Cherryvale it would be considered bad grammar; but, evidently, grammar rules were different in olden times. The unusual phraseology of the whole narrative fascinated Missy; even when you could hardly understand it, it was—inspiring. Yes, that was the word. In inspiring! That was because it was the true language of Romance. The language of Love... Missy's thoughts drifted off to ponder the kind of language the army officer used to Miss Smith; Uncle Charlie to Aunt Isabel...

She came back to the tale of La Beale Isoud.

Alas! true love must ever suffer at the hands of might. For the harper's uncle, old King Mark himself, decided to marry La Beale Isoud; and he ordered poor Sir Tristram personally to escort her from Ireland. And Isoud's mother entrusted to two servants a magical drink which they should give Isoud and King Mark on their wedding-day, so that the married pair “either should love the other the days of their life.”

But, Tristram and La Beale Isoud found that love-drink! Breathing quickly, Missy read the fateful part:

“It happened so that they were thirsty, and it seemed by the colour and the taste that it was a noble wine. When Sir Tristram took the flasket in his hand, and said, 'Madam Isoud, here is the best drink that ever ye drunk, that Dame Braguaine, your maiden, and Gouvernail, my servant, have kept for themselves.' Then they laughed (laughed—think of it!) and made good cheer, and either drank to other freely. And they thought never drink that ever they drank was so sweet nor so good. But by that drink was in their bodies, they loved either other so well that never their love departed for weal neither for woe.” (Think of that, too!)

Missy gazed at the accompanying illustration: La Beale Isoud slenderly tall in her straight girdled gown of grey-green velvet, head thrown back so that her filleted golden hair brushed her shoulders, violet eyes half-closed, and an “antique”-looking metal goblet clasped in her two slim hands; and Sir Tristram so imperiously dark and handsome in his crimson, fur-trimmed doublet, his two hands stretched out and gripping her two shoulders, his black eyes burning as if to look through her closed lids. What a tremendous situation! Love that never would depart for weal neither for woe!

Missy sighed. For she had read and re-read what was the fullness of their woe. And she couldn't help hating King Mark, even if he was Isoud's lawful lord, because he proved himself such a recreant and false traitor to true love. Of course, he WAS Isoud's husband; and Missy lived in Cherryvale, where conventions were not complicated and were strictly adhered to; else scandal was the result. But she told herself that this situation was different because it was an unusual kind of love. They couldn't help themselves. It wasn't their fault. It was the love-drink that did it. Besides, it happened in the Middle Ages...

Suddenly her reverie was blasted by a compelling disaster. The baby, left to his own devices, had stuck a twig into his eye, and was uttering loud cries for attention. Missy remorsefully hurried over and kissed his hurt. As if healed thereby, the baby abruptly ceased crying; even sent her a little wavering smile. Missy gazed at him and pondered: why do babies cry over their tiny troubles, and so often laugh over their bigger ones? She felt an immense yearning over babies—over all things inexplicable.

That evening after supper, grandpa and grandma came over for a little while. They all sat out on the porch and chatted. It was very beautiful out on the porch,—greying twilight, and young little stars just coming into being, all aquiver as if frightened.

The talk turned to Missy's imminent visit.

“Aren't you afraid you'll get homesick?” asked grandma.

It was Missy's first visit away from Cherryvale without her mother. A year ago she would have dreaded the separation, but now she was almost grown-up. Besides, this very summer, in Cherryvale, she had seen how for some reason, a visiting girl seems to excite more attention than does a mere home girl. Missy realized that, of course, she wasn't so “fashionable” as was the sophisticated Miss Slade from Macon City who had so agitated Cherryvale, yet she was pleased to try the experience for herself. Moreover, the visit was to be at Uncle Charlie's!

“Oh, no,” answered Missy. “Not with Uncle Charlie and Aunt Isabel. She's so pretty and wears such pretty clothes—remember that grey silk dress with grey-topped shoes exactly to match?”

“I think she has shoes to match everything, even her wrappers,” said grandma rather drily. “Isabel's very extravagant.”

“Extravagance becomes a virtue when Isabel wears the clothes,” commented grandpa. Grandpa often said “deep” things like that, which were hard to understand exactly.

“She shouldn't squander Charlie's money,” insisted grandma.

“Charlie doesn't seem to mind it,” put in mother in her gentle way. “He's as pleased as Punch buying her pretty things.”

“Yes—poor Charlie!” agreed grandma. “And there's another thing: Isabel's always been used to so much attention, I hope she won't give poor Charlie anxiety.”

Why did grandma keep calling him “poor” Charlie? Missy had always understood that Uncle Charlie wasn't poor at all; he owned the biggest “general store” in Pleasanton and was, in fact, the “best-fixed” of the whole Merriam family.

But, save for fragments, she soon lost the drift of the family discussion. She was absorbed in her own trend of thoughts. At Uncle Charlie's she was sure of encountering Romance. Living-and-breathing Romance. And only two days more! How could she wait?

But the two days flew by in a flurry of mending, and running ribbons, and polishing all her shoes and wearing old dresses to keep her good ones clean, and, finally, packing. It was all so exciting that only at the last minute just before the trunk was shut, did she remember to tuck in “The Romance of King Arthur.”

At the depot in Pleasanton, Aunt Isabel alone met her; Uncle Charlie was “indisposed.” Missy was sorry to hear that. For she had liked Uncle Charlie even before he had become Romantic. He was big and silent like father and grandpa and you had a feeling that, like them, he understood you more than did most grown-ups.

She liked Aunt Isabel, too; she couldn't have helped that, because Aunt Isabel was so radiantly beautiful. Missy loved all beautiful things. She loved the heavenly colour of sunlight through the stained-glass windows at church; the unquenchable blaze of her nasturtium bed under a blanket of grey mist; the corner street-lamp reflecting on the wet sidewalk; the smell of clean, sweet linen sheets; the sound of the brass band practicing at night, blaring but unspeakably sad through the distance; the divine mystery of faint-tinted rainbows; trees in moonlight turned into great drifts of fairy-white blossoms.

And she loved shining ripples of golden hair; and great blue eyes that laughed in a sidewise glance and then turned softly pensive in a second; and a sweet high voice now vivacious and now falling into hushed cadences; and delicate white hands always restlessly fluttering; and, a drifting, elusive fragrance, as of wind-swept petals...

All of which meant that she loved Aunt Isabel very much; especially in the frilly, pastel-flowered organdy she was wearing to-day—an “extravagant” dress, doubtless, but lovely enough to justify that. Naturally such a person as Aunt Isabel would make her home a beautiful place. It was a “bungalow.” Missy had often regretted that her own home had been built before the vogue of the bungalow. And now, when she beheld Aunt Isabel's enchanting house, the solid, substantial furnishings left behind in Cherryvale lost all their savour for her, even the old-fashioned “quaintness” of grandma's house.

For Aunt Isabel's house was what Pleasanton termed “artistic.” It had white-painted woodwork, and built-in bookshelves instead of ordinary bookcases, and lots of window-seats, and chintz draperies which trailed flowers or birds or peacocks, which were like a combination of both, and big wicker chairs with deep cushions—all very bright and cosy and beautiful. In the living-room were some Chinese embroideries which Missy liked, especially when the sun came in and shone upon their soft, rich colours; she had never before seen Chinese embroideries and, thus, encountered a brand-new love. Then Aunt Isabel was the kind of woman who keeps big bowls of fresh flowers sitting around in all the rooms, even if there's no party—a delightful habit. Missy was going to adore watching Aunt Isabel's pretty, restless hands flutter about as, each morning, she arranged the fresh flowers in their bowls.

Even in Missy's room there was a little bowl of jade-green pottery, a colour which harmonized admirably with sweet peas, late roses, nasturtiums, or what-not. And all the furniture in that room was painted white, while the chintz bloomed with delicate little nosegays.

The one inharmonious element was that of Uncle Charlie's indisposition—not only the fact that he was suffering, but also the nature of his ailment. For Uncle Charlie, it developed, had been helping move a barrel of mixed-pickles in the grocery department of his store, and the barrel had fallen full-weight upon his foot and broken his big toe. Missy realized that, of course, a tournament with a sword-thrust in the heart, or some catastrophe like that, would have meant a more dangerous injury; but—a barrel of pickles! And his big toe! Any toe was unromantic. But the BIG toe! That was somehow the worst of all.

Uncle Charlie, however, spoke quite openly of the cause of his trouble. Also of its locale. Indeed, he could hardly have concealed the latter, as his whole foot was bandaged up, and he had to hobble about, very awkwardly, with the aid of a cane.

Uncle Charlie's indisposition kept him from accompanying Missy and Aunt Isabel to an ice-cream festival which was held on the Congregational church lawn that first night. Aunt Isabel was a Congregationalist; and, as mother was a Presbyterian and grandma a Methodist, Missy was beginning to feel a certain kinship with all religions.

This festival proved to be a sort of social gathering, because the Congregational church in Pleasanton was attended by the town's “best” people. The women were as stylishly dressed as though they were at a bridge party—or a tournament. The church lawn looked very picturesque with red, blue and yellow lanterns—truly a fair lawn and “well victualled” with its ice-cream tables in the open. Large numbers of people strolled about, and ate, and chatted and laughed. The floating voices of people you couldn't see, the flickering light of the lanterns, the shadows just beyond their swaying range, all made it seem gay and alluring, so that you almost forgot that it was only a church festival.

A big moon rose up from behind the church-tower, a beautiful and medieval-looking combination. Missy thought of those olden-time feasts “unto kings and dukes,” when there was revel and play, and “all manner of noblesse.” And, though none but her suspected it, the little white-covered tables became long, rough-hewn boards, and the Congregational ladies' loaned china became antique-looking pewter, and the tumblers of water were golden flaskets of noble wine. Missy, who was helping Aunt Isabel serve at one of the tables, attended her worshipful patrons with all manner of noblesse. She was glad she was wearing her best pink mull with the brocaded sash.

Aunt Isabel's table was well patronized. It seemed to Missy that most of the men present tried to get “served” here. Perhaps it was because they admired Aunt Isabel. Missy couldn't have blamed them for that, because none of the other Congregational ladies was half as pretty. To-night Aunt Isabel had on a billowy pale-blue organdy, and she looked more like an angel than ever. An ethereally radiant, laughing, vivacious angel. And whenever she moved near you, you caught a ghostly whiff of that delicious perfume. (Missy now knows Aunt Isabel got it from little sachet bags, tucked away with her clothes, and from an “atomizer” which showered a delicate, fairy-like spray of fragrance upon her hair.) There was one young man, who was handsome in a dark, imperious way, who hung about and ate so much ice-cream that Missy feared lest he should have an “upset” to-morrow.

Also, there was another persevering patron for whom she surmised, with modest palpitation, Aunt Isabel might not be the chief attraction. The joy of being a visiting girl was begun! This individual was a talkative, self-confident youth named Raleigh Peters. She loved the name Raleigh—though for the Peters part she didn't care so much. And albeit, with the dignity which became her advancing years, she addressed him as “Mr. Peters,” in her mind she preferred to think of him as “Raleigh.” Raleigh, she learned (from himself), was the only son of a widowed mother and, though but little older than Missy, had already started making his own way by clerking in Uncle Charlie's store. He clerked in the grocery department, the prosperity of which, she gathered, was largely due to his own connection with it. Some day, he admitted, he was going to own the biggest grocery store in the State. He was thrillingly independent and ambitious and assured. All that seemed admirable, but—if only he hadn't decided on groceries! “Peters' Grocery Store!” Missy thought of jousting, of hawking, of harping, customs which noble gentlemen used to follow, and sighed.

But Raleigh, unaware that his suit had been lost before it started, accompanied them all home. “All” because the dark and imperiously handsome young man went along, too. His name was Mr. Saunders, and Missy had now learned he was a “travelling man” who came to Pleasanton to sell Uncle Charlie merchandise; he was also quite a friend of the family's, she gathered, and visited them at the house.

When they reached home, Mr. Saunders suggested stopping in a minute to see how Uncle Charlie was. However, Uncle Charlie, it turned out, was already in bed.

“But you needn't go yet, anyway,” said Aunt Isabel. “It's heavenly out here on the porch.”

“Doesn't the hour wax late?” demurred Mr. Saunders. “Wax late!”—What quaint, delightful language he used!

“Oh, it's still early. Stay a while, and help shake off the atmosphere of the festival—those festivals bore me to death!”

Odd how women can act one way while they're feeling another way! Missy had supposed, at the festival, that Aunt Isabel was having a particularly enjoyable time.

“Stay and let's have some music,” Aunt Isabel went on. “You left your ukelele here last week.”

So the handsome Mr. Saunders played the ukelele!—How wonderfully that suited his type. And it was just the kind of moonlight night for music. Missy rejoiced when Mr. Saunders decided to stay, and Aunt Isabel went in the house for the ukelele. It was heavenly when Mr. Saunders began to play and sing. The others had seated themselves in porch chairs, but he chose a place on the top step, his head thrown back against a pillar, and the moon shining full on his dark, imperious face. His bold eyes now gazed dreamily into distance as, in a golden tenor that seemed to melt into the moonlight itself, he sang:

“They plucked the stars out of the blue, dear, Gave them to you, dear, For eyes... ”

The ukelele under his fingers thrummed out a soft, vibrant, melancholy accompaniment. It was divine! Here surely was a “harper passing all other!” Mr. Saunders looked something like a knight, too—all but his costume. He was so tall and dark and handsome; and his dark eyes were bold, though now so soft from his own music.

The music stopped. Aunt Isabel jumped up from her porch chair, left the shadows, and seated herself beside him on the moonlit top.

“That looks easy,” she said. “Show me how to do it.”

She took the ukelele from him. He showed her how to place her fingers—their fingers got tangled up—they laughed.

Missy started to laugh, too, but stopped right in the middle of it. A sudden thought had struck her, remembrance of another beauteous lady who had been “learned” to harp. She gazed down on Aunt Isabel—how beautiful there in the white moonlight! So fair and slight, the scarf-thing around her shoulders like a shroud of mist, hair like unto gold, eyes like the stars of heaven. Her eyes were now lifted laughingly to Mr. Saunders'. She was so close he must catch that faintly sweetness of her hair. He returned the look and started to sing again; while La Beale—no, Aunt Isabel—

Even the names were alike!

Missy drew in a quick, sharp breath. Mr. Saunders, now smiling straight at Aunt Isabel as she tried to pick the chords, went on:

“They plucked the stars out of the blue, dear, Gave them to you, dear, For eyes...”

How expressively he sang those words! Missy became troubled. Of course Romance was beautiful but those things belonged in ancient times. You wouldn't want things like that right in your own family, especially when Uncle Charlie already had a broken big toe...

She forgot that the music was beautiful, the night bewitching; she even forgot to listen to what Raleigh was saying, till he leaned forward and demanded irately:

“Say! you haven't gone to sleep, have you?”

Missy gave a start, blinked, and looked self-conscious.

“Oh, excuse me,” she murmured. “I guess I was sort of dreaming.”

Mr. Saunders, overhearing, glanced up at her.

“The spell of moon and music, fair maid?” he asked. And, though he smiled, she didn't feel that he was making fun of her.

Again that quaint language! A knight of old might have talked that way! But Missy, just now, was doubtful as to whether a knight in the flesh was entirely desirable.

It was with rather confused emotions that, after the visitors had departed and she had told Aunt Isabel good night, Missy went up to the little white-painted, cretonne-draped room. Life was interesting, but sometimes it got very queer.

After she had undressed and snapped off the light, she leaned out of the window and looked at the night for a long time. Missy loved the night; the hordes of friendly little stars which nodded and whispered to one another; the round silver moon, up there at some enigmatic distance yet able to transfigure the whole world with fairy-whiteness—turning the dew on the grass into pearls, the leaves on the trees into trembling silver butterflies, and the dusty street into a breadth of shimmering silk. At night, too, the very flowers seemed to give out a sweeter odour; perhaps that was because you couldn't see them.

Missy leaned farther out the window to sniff in that damp, sweet scent of unseen flowers, to feel the white moonlight on her hand. She had often wished that, by some magic, the world might be enabled to spin out its whole time in such a gossamer, irradiant sheen as this—a sort of moon-haunted night-without-end, keeping you tingling with beautiful, blurred, indescribable feelings.

But to-night, for the first time, Missy felt skeptical as to that earlier desire. She still found the night beautiful—oh, inexpressibly beautiful!—but moonlight nights were what made lovers want to look into each other's eyes, and sing each other love songs “with expression.” To be sure, she had formerly considered this very tendency an elysian feature of such nights; but that was when she thought that love always was right for its own sake, that true lovers never should be thwarted. She still held by that belief; and yet—she visioned Uncle Charlie, dear Uncle Charlie, so fond of buying Aunt Isabel extravagant organdies and slippers to match; so like grandpa and father—and King Mark!

Missy had always hated King Mark, the lawful husband, the enemy of true love. But Romance gets terribly complicated when it threatens to leave the Middle Ages, pop right in on you when you are visiting in Pleasanton; and when the lawful husband is your own Uncle Charlie—poor Uncle Charlie!—lying in there suffering with his broken—well there was no denying it was his big toe.

Missy didn't know that her eyes had filled—tears sometimes came so unexpectedly nowadays—till a big drop splashed down on her hand.

She felt very, very sad. Often she didn't mind being sad. Sometimes she even enjoyed it in a peculiar way on moonlit nights; found a certain pleasant poignancy of exaltation in the feeling. But there are different kinds of sadness. To-night she didn't like it. She forsook the moonlit vista and crept into bed.

The next morning she overslept. Perhaps it was because she wasn't in her own little east room at home, where the sun and Poppy, her cat, vied to waken her; or perhaps because it had turned intensely hot and sultry during the night—the air seemed to glue down her eyelids so as to make waking up all the harder.

It was Sunday, and, when she finally got dressed and downstairs, the house was still unusually quiet. But she found Uncle Charlie in his “den” with the papers. He said Aunt Isabel was staying in bed with a headache; and he himself hobbled into the dining room with Missy, and sat with her while the maid (Aunt Isabel called her hired girl a “maid”) gave her breakfast.

Uncle Charlie seemed cheerful despite his—his trouble. And everything seemed so peaceful and beautiful that Missy could hardly realize that ever Tragedy might come to this house. Somewhere in the distance church bells were tranquilly sounding. Out in the kitchen could be heard the ordinary clatter of dishes. And in the dining room it was very, very sweet. The sun filtered through the gently swaying curtains, touching vividly the sweet peas on the breakfast-table. The sweet peas were arranged to stand upright in a round, shallow bowl, just as if they were growing up out of a little pool—a marvellously artistic effect. The china was very artistic, too, Japanese, with curious-looking dragons in soft old-blue. And, after the orange, she had a finger-bowl with a little sprig of rose-geranium she could crunch between her fingers till it sent out a heavenly odour. It was just like Aunt Isabel to have rose-geranium in her finger-bowls!

Her mind was filled with scarcely defined surmises concerning Aunt Isabel, her unexpected headache, and the too handsome harper. But Uncle Charlie, unsuspecting, talked on in that cheerful strain. He was teasing Missy because she liked the ham and eggs and muffins, and took a second helping of everything.

“Good thing I can get groceries at wholesale!” he bantered. “Else I'd never dare ask you to visit me!”

Missy returned his smile, grateful that the matter of her appetite might serve to keep him jolly a little while longer. Perhaps he didn't even suspect, yet. DID he suspect? She couldn't forbear a tentative question:

“What seems to be the matter with Aunt Isabel, Uncle Charlie?”

“Why, didn't I tell you she has a headache?'

“Oh! a headache.” She was silent a second; then, as if there was something strange about this malady, she went on: “Did she SAY she had a headache?”

“Of course, my dear. It's a pretty bad one. I guess it must be the weather.” It was hot. Uncle Charlie had taken off his coat and was in his shirt sleeves—she was pleased to note it was a silken shirt; little beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead, and on his head where it was just beginning to get bald. Somehow, the fact that he looked so hot had the effect of making her feel even more tender toward him. So, though she thirsted for information, not for the world would she have aroused his suspicions by questions. And she made her voice very casual, when she finally enquired:

“By the way, that Mr. Saunders who brought us home is awfully handsome. Sort of gallant looking, don't you think?”

Uncle Charlie laughed; then shook his finger at her in mock admonition.

“Oh, Missy! You've fallen, too?”

Missy gulped; Uncle Charlie had made an unwitting revelation! But she tried not to give herself away; still casual, she asked:

“Oh! do other people fall?”

“All the ladies fall for Saunders,” said Uncle Charlie.

Missy hesitated, then hazarded:

“Aunt Isabel, too?”

“Oh, yes.” Uncle Charlie looked pathetically unconcerned. “Aunt Isabel likes to have him around. He often comes in handy at dances.”

It would be just like Mr. Saunders to be a good dancer!

“He harps well, too,” she said meditatively.

“What's that?” enquired Uncle Charlie.

“Oh, I mean that thing he plays.”

“The ukelele. Yes, Saunders is a wizard with it. But in spite of that he's a good fellow.” (What did “in spite of that” mean—didn't Uncle Charlie approve of harpers?)

He continued: “He sometimes goes on fishing-trips with me.”

Fishing-trips! From father Missy had learned that this was the highest proof of camaraderie. So Uncle Charlie didn't suspect. He was harbouring the serpent in his very bosom. Missy crumpled the fragrant rose-geranium reflectively between her fingers.

Then Uncle Charlie suggested that she play something for him on the piano. And Missy, feeling every minute tenderer toward him because she must keep to herself the dreadful truths which would hurt him if he knew, hurried to his side, took away his cane, and put her own arm in its place for him to lean on. And Uncle Charlie seemed to divine there was something special in her deed, for he reached down and patted the arm which supported him, and said:

“You're a dear child, Missy.”

In the living-room the sun was shining through the charming, cretonne-hung bay window and upon the soft, rich colours of the Chinese embroideries. The embroideries were on the wall beyond the piano, so that she could see them while she played. Uncle Charlie wasn't in her range of vision unless she turned her head; but she could smell his cigar, and could sense him sitting there very quiet in a big wicker chair, smoking, his eyes half closed, his bandaged foot stretched out on a little stool.

And her poignant feeling of sympathy for him, sitting there thus, and her rapturous delight in the sun-touched colours of the embroideries, and the hushed peace of the hot Sabbath morning, all seemed to intermingle and pierce to her very soul. She was glad to play the piano. When deeply moved she loved to play, to pour out her feelings in dreamy melodies and deep vibrant harmonies with queer minor cadences thrown in—the kind of music you can play “with expression,” while you vision mysterious, poetic pictures.

After a moment's reflection, she decided on “The Angel's Serenade”; she knew it by heart, and adored playing it. There was something brightly-sweet and brightly-sad in those strains of loveliness; she could almost hear the soft flutter of angelic wings, almost see the silvery sheen of them astir. And, oddly, all that sheen and stir, all that sadly-sweet sound, seemed to come from within herself—just as if her own soul were singing, instead of the piano keyboard.

And with Missy, to play “The Angel's Serenade” was to crave playing more such divine pieces; she drifted on into “Traumerei”; “Simple Confession”; “One Sweetly Solemn Thought,” with variations. She played them all with extra “expression,” putting all her loving sympathy for Uncle Charlie into her finger-tips. And he must have been soothed by it, for he dozed off, and came to with a start when she finally paused, to tell her how beautifully she played.

Then began a delicious time of talking together. Uncle Charlie was like grandpa—the kind of man you enjoyed talking with, about deep, unusual things. They talked about music, and the meaning of the pieces she'd played. Then about reading. He asked her what she was reading nowadays.

“This is your book, isn't it?” he enquired, picking up “The Romances of King Arthur” from the table beside him. Heavens! how tactless of her to have brought it down this morning! But there was nothing for her to do, save to act in a natural, casual manner.

“Yes,” she said.

Uncle Charlie opened the book. Heavens! it fell open at the illustration of the two lovers drinking the fateful potion!

“Which is your favourite legend?” he asked.

Missy was too nervous to utter anything but the simple truth.

“The story of Sir Tristram and La Beale Isoud,” she answered.

“Ah,” said Uncle Charlie. He gazed at the picture she knew so well. What was he thinking?

“Why is it your favourite?” he went on.

“I don't know—because it's so romantic, I guess. And so sad and beautiful.”

“Ah, yes,” said Uncle Charlie. “You have a feeling for the classic, I see. You call her 'Isoud'?”

That pleased Missy; and, despite her agitation over this malaprop theme, she couldn't resist the impulse to air her lately acquired learning.

“Yes, but she has different names in all the different languages, you know. And she was the most beautiful lady or maiden that ever lived.”

“Is that so?” said Uncle Charlie. “More beautiful than your Aunt Isabel?”

Missy hesitated, confused; the conversation was getting on dangerous ground. “Why, I guess they're the same type, don't you? I've often thought Aunt Isabel looks like La Beale Isoud.”

Uncle Charlie smiled again at her—an altogether cheerful kind of smile; no, he didn't suspect any tragic undercurrent beneath this pleasant-sounding conversation. All he said was:

“Aunt Isabel should feel flattered—but I hope she finds a happier lot.”

Ah!

“Yes, I hope so,” breathed Missy, rather weakly.

Then Uncle Charlie at last closed the book.

“Poor Tristram and Isolde,” he said, as if speaking an epitaph.

But Missy caught her breath. Uncle Charlie felt sorry for the ill-fated lovers. Oh, if he only knew!

At dinner time (on Sundays they had midday dinner here), Aunt Isabel came down to the table. She said her head was better, but she looked pale; and her blue eyes were just like the Blessed Damozel's, “deeper than the depth of waters stilled at even.” Yet, pale and quiet like this, she seemed even more beautiful than ever, especially in that adorable lavender negligee—with slippers to match. Missy regarded her with secret fascination.

After dinner, complaining of the heat, Aunt Isabel retired to her room again. She suggested that Missy take a nap, also. Missy didn't think she was sleepy, but, desiring to be alone with her bewildered thoughts, she went upstairs and lay down. The better to think things over, she closed her eyes; and when she opened them to her amazement there was Aunt Isabel standing beside the bed—a radiant vision in pink organdy this time—and saying:

“Wake up, sleepy-head! It's nearly six o'clock!”

Aunt Isabel, her vivacious self once more, with gentle fingers (Oh, hard not to love Aunt Isabel!) helped Missy get dressed for supper.

It was still so hot that, at supper, everyone drank a lot of ice-tea and ate a lot of ice-cream. Missy felt in a steam all over when they rose from the table and went out to sit on the porch. It was very serene, for all the sultriness, out on the porch; and Aunt Isabel was so sweet toward Uncle Charlie that Missy felt her gathering suspicions had something of the unreal quality of a nightmare. Aunt Isabel was reading aloud to Uncle Charlie out of the Sunday paper. Beautiful! The sunset was carrying away its gold like some bold knight with his captured, streaming-tressed lady. The fitful breeze whispered in the rhythm of olden ballads. Unseen church bells sent long-drawn cadences across the evening hush. And the little stars quivered into being, to peer at the young poignancy of feeling which cannot know what it contributes to the world...

Everything was idyllic—that is, almost idyllic—till, suddenly Uncle Charlie spoke:

“Isn't that Saunders coming up the street?”

Why, oh why, did Mr. Saunders have to come and spoil everything?

But poor Uncle Charlie seemed glad to see him—just as glad as Aunt Isabel. Mr. Saunders sat up there amongst them, laughing and joking, now and then directing one of his quaint, romantic-sounding phrases at Missy. And she pretended to be pleased with him—indeed, she would have liked Mr. Saunders under any other circumstances.

Presently he exclaimed:

“By my halidome, I'm hot! My kingdom for a long, tall ice-cream soda!”

And Uncle Charlie said:

“Well, why don't you go and get one? The drug store's just two blocks around the corner.”

“A happy suggestion,” said Mr. Saunders. He turned to Aunt Isabel. “Will you join me?”

“Indeed I will,” she answered. “I'm stifling.”

Then Mr. Saunders looked at Missy.

“And you, fair maid?”

Missy thought a cool soda would taste good.

At the drug store, the three of them sat on tall stools before the white marble counter, and quaffed heavenly cold soda from high glasses in silver-looking flaskets. “Poor Charlie! He likes soda, so,” remarked Aunt Isabel.

“Why not take him some?”

Missy didn't know you could do that, but the drug store man said it would be all right.

Then they all started home again, Aunt Isabel carrying the silver-looking flasket.

It was when they were about half-way, that Aunt Isabel suddenly exclaimed:

“Do you know, I believe I could drink another soda? I feel hotter than ever—and it looks so good!”

“Why not drink it, then?” asked Mr. Saunders.

“Oh, no,” said Aunt Isabel.

“Do,” he insisted. “We can go back and get another.”

“Well, I'll take a taste,” she said.

On the words, she lifted the flasket to her lips and took a long draught. Then Mr. Saunders, laughing, caught it from her, and he took a long draught.

Missy felt a wave of icy horror sweep down her spine. She wanted to cry out in protest. For, even while she stared at them, at Aunt Isabel in pink organdie and Mr. Saunders in blue serge dividing the flasket of soda between them, a vision presented itself clearly before her eyes:

La Beale Isoud slenderly tall in a straight girdled gown of grey-green velvet, head thrown back so that her filleted golden hair brushed her shoulders, violet eyes half-closed, and an “antique”-looking flasket clasped in her two slim hands; and Sir Tristram so imperiously dark and handsome in his crimson, fur-trimmed doublet, his two hands stretched out and gripping her two shoulders, his black eyes burning as if to look through her closed lids—the magical love-potion... love that never would depart for weal neither for woe...

Missy closed her eyes tight, as if fearing what they might behold in the flesh. But when she opened them again, Aunt Isabel was only gazing into the drained flasket with a rueful expression.

Then they went back and got another soda for Uncle Charlie. And poor Uncle Charlie, unsuspecting, seemed to enjoy it.

During the remainder of that evening Missy was unusually subdued. She realized, of course, that there were no love-potions nowadays; that they existed only in the Middle Ages; and that the silver flasket contained everyday ice-cream soda. And she wasn't sure she knew exactly what the word “symbol” meant, but she felt that somehow the ice-cream soda, shared between them, was symbolic of that famous, fateful drink. She wished acutely that this second episode, so singularly parallel, hadn't happened.

She was still absorbed in gloomy meditations when Mr. Saunders arose to go.

“Oh, it's early yet,” protested Uncle Charlie—dear, kind, ignorant Uncle Charlie!

“But I've got to catch the ten-thirty-five,” said Mr. Saunders.

“Why can't you stay over till to-morrow night,” suggested Aunt Isabel. She had risen, too, and now put her hand on Mr. Saunders's sleeve; her face looked quite pleading in the moonlight. “There's to be a dance in Odd Fellows' Hall.”

“I'd certainly love to stay.” He even dared to take hold of her hand openly. “But I've got to be in Paola in the morning, and Blue Mound next day.”

“The orchestra's coming down from Macon City,” she cajoled.

“Now, don't make it any harder for me,” begged Mr. Saunders, smiling down at her.

Aunt Isabel petulantly drew away her hand.

“You're selfish! And Charlie laid up and all!”

Mr. Saunders outspread his hands in a helpless gesture.

“Well, you know the hard lot of the knight of the road—here to-day, gone to-morrow, never able to stay where his heart would wish!”

Missy caught her breath; how incautiously he talked!

After Mr. Saunders was gone, Aunt Isabel sat relapsed in her porch chair, very quiet. Missy couldn't keep her eyes off of that lovely, apathetic figure. Once Aunt Isabel put her hand to her head.

“Head hitting it up again?” asked Uncle Charlie solicitously.

Aunt Isabel nodded.

“You'd better get to bed, then,” he said. And, despite his wounded toe, he wouldn't let her attend to the shutting-up “chores,” but, accompanied by Missy, hobbled around to all the screen doors himself. Poor Uncle Charlie!

It was hard for Missy to get to sleep that night. Her brain was a dark, seething whirlpool. And the air seemed to grow thicker and thicker; it rested heavily on her hot eyelids, pressed suffocatingly against her throat. And when, finally, she escaped her thoughts in sleep, it was only to encounter them again in troubled dreams.

She was awakened abruptly by a terrific noise. Oh, Lord! what was it? She sat up. It sounded as if the house were falling down. Then the room, the whole world, turned suddenly a glaring, ghostly white—then a sharp, spiteful, head-splitting crack of sound—then heavier, staccato volleys—then a baneful rumble, dying away.

A thunder-storm! Oh, Lord! Missy buried her face in her pillow. Nothing in the world so terrified her as thunder-storms.

She seemed to have lain there ages, scarcely breathing, when, in a little lull, above the fierce swish of rain she thought she heard voices. Cautiously she lifted her head; listened. She had left her door open for air and, now, she was sure she heard Uncle Charlie's deep voice. She couldn't hear what he was saying. Then she heard Aunt Isabel's voice, no louder than uncle Charlie's but more penetrating; it had a queer note in it—almost as if she were crying. Suddenly she did cry out!—And then Uncle Charlie's deep grumble again.

Missy's heart nearly stopped beating. Could it be that Uncle Charlie had found out?—That he was accusing Aunt Isabel and making her cry? But surely they wouldn't quarrel in a thunder-storm! Lightning might hit the house, or anything!

The conjunction of terrors was too much for Missy to bear. Finally she crept out of bed and to the door. An unmistakable moan issued from Aunt Isabel's room. And then she saw Uncle Charlie, in bath-robe and pajamas, coming down the hall from the bathroom. He was carrying a hot-water bottle.

“Why, what's the matter, Missy?” he asked her. “The storm frighten you?”

Missy nodded; she couldn't voice those other horrible fears which were tormenting her.

“Well, the worst is over now,” he said reassuringly. “Run back to bed. Your aunt's sick again—I've just been filling the hot-water bottle for her.”

“Is she—very sick?” asked Missy tremulously.

“Pretty sick,” answered Uncle Charlie. “But there's nothing you can do. Jump back into bed.”

So Missy crept back, and listened to the gradual steadying down of the rain. She was almost sorry, now, that the whirlwind of frantic elements had subsided; that had been a sort of terrible complement to the whirlwind of anguish within herself.

She lay there tense, strangling a desperate impulse to sob. La Beale Isoud had died of love—and now Aunt Isabel was already sickening. She half-realized that people don't die of love nowadays—that happened only in the Middle Ages; yet, there in the black stormy night, strange, horrible fancies overruled the sane convictions of daytime. It was fearfully significant, Aunt Isabel's sickening so quickly, so mysteriously. And immediately after Mr. Saunders's departure. That was exactly what La Beale Isoud always did whenever Sir Tristram was obliged to leave her; Sir Tristram was continually having to flee away, a kind of knight of the road, too—to this battle or that tourney or what-not—“here to-day, gone to-morrow, never able to stay where his heart would wish.”

“Oh! oh!”

At last exhaustion had its way with the taut, quivering little body; the hot eyelids closed; the burning cheek relaxed on the pillow. Missy slept.

When she awoke, the sun, which is so blithely indifferent to sufferings of earth, was high up in a clear sky. The new-washed air was cool and sparkling as a tonic. Missy's physical being felt more refreshed than she cared to admit; for her turmoil of spirit had awakened with her, and she felt her body should be in keeping.

By the time she got dressed and downstairs, Uncle Charlie had breakfasted and was about to go down town. He said Aunt Isabel was still in bed, but much better.

“She had no business to drink all those sodas,” he said. “Her stomach was already upset from all that ice-cream and cake the night before—and the hot weather and all—”

Missy was scarcely listening to the last. One phrase had caught her ear: “Her stomach upset!”—How could Uncle Charlie?

But when she went up to Aunt Isabel's room later, the latter reiterated that unromantic diagnosis. But perhaps she was pretending. That would be only natural.

Missy regarded the convalescent; she seemed quite cheerful now, though wan. And not so lovely as she generally did. Missy couldn't forbear a leading remark.

“I'm terribly sorry Mr. Saunders had to go away so soon.” She strove for sympathetic tone, but felt inexpert and self-conscious. “Terribly sorry. I can't—”

And then, suddenly, Aunt Isabel laughed—laughed!—and said a surprising thing.

“What! You, too, Missy? Oh, that's too funny!”

Missy stared—reproach, astonishment, bewilderment, contending in her expression.

Aunt Isabel continued that delighted gurgle.

“Mr. Saunders is a notorious heart-breaker—but I didn't realize he was capturing yours so speedily!”

Striving to keep her dignity, Missy perhaps made her tone more severe than she intended.

“Well,” she accused, “didn't he capture yours, Aunt Isabel?”

Then Aunt Isabel, still laughing a little, but with a serious shade creeping into her eyes, reached out for one of Missy's hands and smoothed it gently between her own.

“No, dear; I'm afraid your Uncle Charlie has that too securely tucked away.”

Something in Aunt Isabel's voice, her manner, her eyes, even more than her words, convinced Missy that she was speaking the real truth. It was all a kind of wild jumbled day-dream she'd been having. La Beale Aunt Isabel wasn't in love with Mr. Saunders after all! She was in love with Uncle Charlie. There had been no romantic undermeaning in all that harp-ukelele business, in the flasket of ice-cream soda, in the mysterious sickness. The sickness wasn't even mysterious any longer. Aunt Isabel had only had an “upset.”

Deeply stirred, Missy withdrew her hand.

“I think I forgot to open my bed to air,” she said, and hurried away to her own room. But, oblivious of the bed, she stood for a long time at the window, staring out at nothing.

Yes; Romance had died out in the Middle Ages...

She was still standing there when the maid called her to the telephone. It was Raleigh Peters on the wire, asking to take her to the dance that night. She accepted, but without enthusiasm. Where were the thrills she had expected to experience while receiving the homage paid a visiting girl? He was just a grocery clerk named Peters!

Yes; Romance had died out in the Middle Ages...

She felt very blase as she hung up the receiver.

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER V. IN THE MANNER OF THE DUCHESS

It was raining—a gentle, trickling summer rain, when, under a heap of magazines near a heavenly attic window, Missy and Tess came upon the paper-backed masterpieces of “The Duchess.”

The volume Missy chanced first to select for reading was entitled “Airy Fairy Lilian.” The very first paragraph was arresting:

Down the broad oak staircase—through the silent hall—into the drawing-room runs Lilian, singing as she goes. The room is deserted; through the half-closed blinds the glad sunshine is rushing, turning to gold all on which its soft touch lingers, and rendering the large, dull, handsome apartment almost comfortable...

“Broad oak staircase”—“drawing-room”—“large, dull, handsome apartment”—oh, wonderful!

Then on to the description of the alluring heroine:

... the face is more than pretty, it is lovely—the fair, sweet, childish face, framed in by its yellow hair; her great velvety eyes, now misty through vain longing, are blue as the skies above her; her nose is pure Greek; her forehead low, but broad, is partly shrouded by little wandering threads of gold that every now and then break loose from bondage, while her lashes, long and dark, curl upward from her eyes, as though hating to conceal the beauty of the exquisite azure within... There is a certain haughtiness about her that contrasts curiously but pleasantly with her youthful expression and laughing, kissable mouth. She is straight and lissome as a young ash tree; her hands and feet are small and well-shaped; in a word, she is chic from the crown of her fair head down to her little arched instep...

Missy sighed; how wonderful it must be to be a creature so endowed by the gods!

Missy—Melissa—now, at the advanced age of fifteen, had supposed she knew all the wonders of books. She had learned to read the Book of Life: its enchantments, so many and so varied in Cherryvale, had kept her big grey eyes wide with smiles or wonder or, just occasionally, darkened with the mystery of sorrow. There was the reiterant magic of greening spring; and the long, leisurely days of delicious summer; the companionship of a quaint and infinitely interesting baby brother, and of her own cat—majesty incarnate on four black legs; and then, just lately, this exciting new “best friend,” Tess O'Neill. Tess had recently moved to Cherryvale, and was “different”—different even from Kitty Allen, though Missy had suffered twinges about letting anyone displace Kitty. But—

And, now, here it was in Tess's adorable attic (full of treasures discarded by departed tenants of the old Smith place) that Missy turned one of Life's milestones and met “the Duchess.”

Missy had loved to read the Bible (good stories there, and beautiful words that made you tingle solemnly); and fairy tales never old; and, almost best of all, the Anthology, full of poetry, that made you feel a strange live spirit back of the wind and a world of mysteries beyond the curtain of the sky.

But this—

The lure of letters was turned loud and seductive as the Blue Danube played on a golden flute by a boy king with his crown on!

Tess glanced up from her reading.

“How's your book?” she enquired.

“Oh, it's wonderful,” breathed Missy.

“Mine, too. Here's a description that reminds me a little of you.”

“Me?” incredulously.

“Yes. It's about the heroine—Phyllis. She's not pretty, but she's got a strange, underlying charm.”

Missy held her breath. She was ashamed to ask Tess to read the description of the strangely charming heroine, but Tess knew what friendship demanded, and read:

“'I am something over five-feet-two, with brown hair that hangs in rich chestnut tresses far below my waist.'”

“Oh,” put in Missy modestly, while her heart palpitated, “my hair is just mouse-coloured.”

“No,” denied Tess authoritatively, “you've got nut-brown locks. And your eyes, too, are something like Phyllis's eyes—great grey eyes with subtle depths. Only yours haven't got saucy hints in them.”

Missy wished her eyes included the saucy hints. However, she was enthralled by Tess's comparison, though incomplete. Was it possible Tess was right?

Missy wasn't vain, but she'd heard before that she had “beautiful eyes.” Perhaps Tess WAS right. Missy blushed and was silent. Just then, even had she known the proper reply to make, she couldn't have voiced it. As “the Duchess” might have phrased it, she was “naturally covered with confusion.”

But already Tess had flitted from the delightfully embarrassing theme of her friend's looks.

“Wouldn't it be grand,” she murmured dreamily, “to live in England?”

“Yes—grand,” murmured Missy in response.

“Everything's so—so baronial over there.”

Baronial!—as always, Tess had hit upon the exact word. Missy sighed again. She had always loved Cherryvale, always been loyal to it; but no one could accuse Cherryvale of being “baronial.”

That evening, when Missy went upstairs to smooth her “nut-brown locks” before supper, she gazed about her room with an expression of faint dissatisfaction. It was an adequate, even pretty room, with its flowered wall-paper and lace curtains and bird's-eye maple “set”; and, by the window, a little drop-front desk where she could sit and write at the times when feeling welled in her till it demanded an outlet.

But, now, she had an inner confused vision of “lounging-chairs” covered with pale-blue satin; of velvet, spindle-legged tables hung with priceless lace and bearing Dresden baskets smothered in flowers. Oh, beautiful! If only to her, Missy, such habitation might ever befall!

However, when she started to “brush up” her hair, she eyed it with a regard more favourable than usual. “Rich chestnut tresses!” She lingered to contemplate, in the mirror, the great grey eyes which looked back at her from their subtle depths. She had a suspicion the act was silly, but it was satisfying.

That evening at the supper-table marked the beginning of a phase in Missy's life which was to cause her family bewilderment, secret surmise, amusement and some anxiety.

During the meal she talked very little. She had learned long ago to keep her thoughts to herself, because old people seldom understand you. Often they ask embarrassing questions and, even if they don't laugh at you, you have the feeling they may be laughing inside. Her present thoughts were so delectable and engrossing that Missy did not always hear when she was spoken to. Toward the end of the meal, just as she caught herself in the nick of time about to pour vinegar instead of cream over her berries, mother said:

“Well, Missy, what's the day-dream this time?”

Missy felt her cheeks “crimson with confusion.” Yesterday, at such a question, she would have made an evasive answer; but now, so much was she one with the charming creature of her thoughts, she forgot to be cautious. She cast her mother a pensive glance from her great grey eyes.

“I don't know—I just feel sort of triste.”

“Tristy?” repeated her astonished parent, using Missy's pronunciation. “Yes—sad, you know.”

“My goodness! What makes you sad?”

But Missy couldn't answer that. Unexpected questions often bring unexpected answers, and not till after she'd made use of the effective new word, did Missy pause to ponder whether she was really sad or not. But, now, she couldn't very well admit her lack of the emotion, so she repeated the pensive glance.

“Does one ever know why one's sad?” she asked in a bewitchingly appealing tone..

“Well, I imagine that sometimes one dees,” put in Aunt Nettie, drily.

Missy ignored Aunt Nettie; often it was best to ignore Aunt Nettie—she was mother's old-maid sister, and she “understood” even less than mother did.

Luckily just then, Marguerite, the coloured hired girl, came to clear off the table. Missy regarded her capable but undistinguished figure.

“I wish they had butlers in Cherryvale,” she observed, incautious again.

“Butlers!—for mercy's sake!” ejaculated Aunt Nettie.

“What books have you got out from the library now, Missy?” asked father. It was an abrupt change of topic, but Missy was glad of the chance to turn from Aunt Nettie's derisive smile.

“Why—let me see. 'David Harum' and 'The History of Ancient Greece'-that's all I think. And oh, yes—I got a French dictionary on my way home this afternoon.”

“Oh! A French dictionary!” commented father.

“It isn't books, Horace,” remarked Aunt Nettie, incomprehensibly. “It's that O'Neill girl.”

“What's that O'Neill girl?” demanded Missy, in a low, suppressed voice.

“Well, if you ask me, her head's full of—”

But a swift gesture from mother brought Aunt Nettie to a sudden pause.

But Missy, suspecting an implied criticism of her friend, began with hauteur:

“I implore you to desist from making any insinuation against Tess O'Neill. I'm very proud to be epris with her!” (Missy made the climactic word rhyme with “kiss.”)

There was a little hush after this outburst from the usually reserved Missy. Father and mother stared at her and then at each other. But Aunt Nettie couldn't refrain from a repetition of the climactic word;

“E-priss!” And she actually giggled!

At the sound, Missy felt herself growing “deathly mute, even to the lips”, but she managed to maintain a mien of intense composure.

“What does that mean, Missy?” queried father.

He was regarding her kindly, with no hint of hidden amusement. Father was a tall, quiet and very wise man, and Missy had sometimes found it possible to talk with him about the unusual things that rose up to fascinate her. She didn't distrust him so much as most grown-ups.

So she smiled at him and said informatively:

“It means to be in intense sympathy with.”

“Oh, I see. Did you find that in the French dictionary?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I see we'll all have to be taking up foreign languages if we're to have such an accomplished young lady in the house.”

He smiled at her in a way that made her almost glad, for a moment, that he was her father instead of a Duke who might surround her with baronial magnificence. Mother, too, she couldn't help loving, though, in her neat, practical gingham dress, she was so unlike Lady Chetwoode, the mother in “Airy Fairy Lilian.” Lady Chetwoode wore dainty caps, all white lace and delicate ribbon bows that matched in colour her trailing gown. Her small and tapering hands were covered with rings. She walked with a slow, rather stately step, and there was a benignity about her that went straight to the heart... Well, there was something about mother, too, that went straight to the heart. Missy wouldn't trade off her mother for the world.

But when, later, she wandered into the front parlour, she couldn't help wishing it were a “drawing-room.” And when she moved on out to the side porch, she viewed with a certain discontent the peaceful scene before her. Usually she had loved the side porch at the sunset hour: the close fragrance of honeysuckles which screened one end, the stretch of slick green grass and the nasturtium bed aflame like an unstirring fire, the trees rustling softly in the evening breeze—yes, she loved it all for the very tranquillity, the poignant tranquillity of it.

But that was before she realized there were in the world vast swards that swept beyond pleasure-grounds (what WERE “pleasure-grounds”?), past laughing brooklets and gurgling streams, on to the Park where roamed herds of many-antlered deer and where mighty oaks flung their arms far and wide; while mayhap, on a topmost branch, a crow swayed and swung as the soft wind rushed by, making an inky blot upon the brilliant green, as if it were a patch upon the alabaster cheek of some court belle...

Oh, enchanting!

But there were no vast swards nor pleasure-grounds nor Parks of antlered deer in Cherryvale.

Then Poppylinda, the majestic black cat, trod up the steps of the porch and rubbed herself against her mistress's foot, as if saying, “Anyhow, I'm here!”

Missy reached down and lifted Poppy to her lap. She adored Poppy; but she couldn't help reflecting that a Skye terrier (though she had never seen one) was a more distinguished kind of pet than a black cat. A black cat was—well, bourgeois (the last rhyming with “boys”). Airy fairy Lilian's pet was a Skye. It was named Fifine, and was very frisky. Lilian, as she sat exchanging sprightly badinage with her many admirers, was wont to sit with her hand perdu beneath the silky Fifine in her lap.

“No, no, Fifine! Down, sir!” murmured Missy absently.

Poppy, otherwise immobile, blinked upward an inquiring gaze.

“Naughty Fifine! You MUST not kiss my fingers, sir!”

Poppy blinked again. Who might this invisible Fifine be? Her mistress was conversing in a very strange manner; and the strangest part of it was that she was looking straight into Poppy's own eyes.

Poppy didn't know it, but her name was no longer Poppylinda. It was Fifine.

That night Missy went to bed in her own little room in Cherryvale; but, strange as it may seem to you, she spent the hours till waking far across the sea, in a manor-house in baronial England.

After that, for a considerable period, only the body, the husk of her, resided in Cherryvale; the spirit, the pulsing part of her, was in the land of her dreams. Events came and passed and left her unmarked. Even the Evans elopement brought no thrill; the affair of a youth who clerks in a bank and a girl who works in a post office is tame business to one who has been participating in the panoplied romances of the high-born.

Missy lived, those days, to dream in solitude or to go to Tess's where she might read of further enchantments. Then, too, at Tess's, she had a confidante, a kindred spirit, and could speak out of what was filling her soul. There is nothing more satisfying than to be able to speak out of what is filling your soul. The two of them got to using a special parlance when alone. It was freely punctuated with phrases so wonderfully camouflaged that no Frenchman would have guessed that they were French.

“Don't I hear the frou-frou of silken skirts?” inquired Missy one afternoon when she was in Tess's room, watching her friend comb the golden tresses which hung in rich profusion about her shoulders.

“It's the mater,” answered Tess. “She's dressed to pay some visits to the gentry. Later she's to dine at the vicarage. She's ordered out the trap, I believe.”

“Oh, not the governess-cart?”

Yes, Tess said it WAS the governess-cart; and her answer was as solemn as Missy's question.

It was that same “dinner” at the “vicarage”—in Cherryvale one dines at mid-day, and the Presbyterian minister blindly believed he had invited the O'Neills for supper—that gave Tess one of her most brilliant inspirations. It came to her quite suddenly, as all true inspirations do. The Marble Hearts would give a dinner-party!

The Marble Hearts were Missy's “crowd,” thus named after Tess had joined it. Of course, said Tess, they must have a name. A fascinating fount of ideas was Tess's. She declared, now, that they MUST give a dinner-party, a regular six o'clock function. Life for the younger set in Cherryvale was so bourgeois, so ennuye. It devolved upon herself and Missy to elevate it. So, at the next meeting of the crowd, they would broach the idea. Then they'd make all the plans; decide on the date and decorations and menu, and who would furnish what, and where the fete should be held. Perhaps Missy's house might be a good place. Yes. Missy's dining room was large, with the porch just outside the windows—a fine place for the orchestra.

Missy listened eagerly to all the earlier features of the scheme—she knew Tess could carry any point with the crowd; but about the last suggestion she felt misgivings. Mother had very strange, old-fashioned notions about some things. She MIGHT be induced to let Missy help give an evening dinner-party, though she held that fifteen-year-old girls should have only afternoon parties; but to be persuaded to lend her own house for the affair—that would be an achievement even for Tess!

However miracles continue to happen in this cut-and-dried world. When the subject was broached to Missy's mother with carefully considered tact, she bore up with puzzling but heavenly equanimity. She looked thoughtfully at the two girls in turn, and then gazed out the window.

“A six o'clock dinner-party, you say?” she repeated, her eyes apparently fixed on the nasturtium bed.

“Yes, Mrs. Merriam.” It was Tess who answered. Missy's heart, an anxious lump in her throat, hindered speech.

“For heaven's sake! What next?” ejaculated Aunt Nettie.

Mrs. Merriam regarded the nasturtiums for a second longer before she brought her eyes back to the two young faces and broke the tense hush.

“What made you think you wanted to give a dinner-party?”

Oh, rapture! Missy's heart subsided an inch, and she drew a long breath. But she wisely let Tess do the replying.

“Oh, everything in Cherryvale's so passe' and ennuye'. We want to do something novel—something really distingue'—if you know what I mean.”

“I believe I do,” replied Mrs. Merriam gravely.

“Dis-tinn-gwy!” repeated Aunt Nettie. “Well, if you ask me—” But Mrs. Merriam silenced her sister with an unobtrusive gesture. She turned to the two petitioners.

“You think an evening dinner would be—distinngwy?”

“Oh, yes—the way we've planned it out!” affirmed Tess. She, less diffident than Missy, was less reserved in her disclosures. She went on eagerly: “We've got it all planned out. Five courses: oyster cocktails; Waldorf salad; veal loaf, Saratoga chips, devilled eggs, dill pickles, mixed pickles, chow-chow and peach pickles: heavenly hash; and ice-cream with three kinds of cake. And small cups of demitasse, of course.”

“Three kinds of cake?”

“Well,” explained Tess, “you see Beula and Beth and Kitty all want cake for their share—they say their mothers won't be bothered with anything else. We're dividing the menu up between us, you know.”

“I see. And what have you allotted to Missy?”

Missy herself found courage to answer this question; Mother's grave inquiries were bringing her intense relief.

“I thought maybe I could furnish the heavenly hash, Mother.”

“Heavenly hash?” Mother looked perplexed. “What's that?”

“I don't know,” admitted Missy. “But I liked the name—it's so alluring. Beulah suggested it—I guess she knows the recipe.”

“I think it's all kinds of fruit chopped together,” volunteered Tess.

“But aren't you having a great deal of fruit—and pickles?” suggested Mrs. Merriam mildly.

“Oh, well,” explained Tess, rather grandly, “at a swell function you don't have to have many substantial viands, you know.”

“Oh, I nearly forgot—this is to be a swell function.”