"I brought all of Evangeline's clothes with me," announced Girlie, as soon as Mrs. Sherman had left them to themselves. "'Cause I came to stay all morning, and I knew she'd have plenty of time to wear every dress she owns."

Mary could not help the gasp of dismay that escaped her, thinking of that fascinating row of pink slippers awaiting her up-stairs. From bridesmaids to doll-babies is a woful fall.

"Where is your doll?" demanded Girlie.

"Oh, I haven't any," said Mary, with a grown-up shrug of the shoulders. "I stopped playing with them ages ago."

Then realizing what an impolite speech that was, she hastened to make amends by adding: "I sometimes dress Hazel Lee's, though. Hazel is one of my friends back in Arizona. Once I made a whole Indian costume for it like the squaws make. The moccasins were made out of the top of a kid glove, and beaded just like real ones."

Girlie's pale eyes opened so wide at the mention of Indians that Mary almost forgot her disappointment at being called away from the big girls, and proceeded to make them open still wider with her tales of life on the desert. In a few moments she carried the trunk out on to a vine-covered side porch, where they made a wigwam out of two hammocks and a sunshade, and changed the waxen Evangeline into a blanketed squaw, with feathers in her blond Parisian hair.

Mom Beck looked out several times, and finally brought them a set of Lloyd's old doll dishes and the daintiest of luncheons to spread on a low table. There were olive sandwiches, frosted cakes, berries and cream, and bonbons and nuts in a silver dish shaped like a calla-lily.

For the first two hours Mary really enjoyed being hostess, although now and then she wished she could slip up-stairs long enough to see what the girls were doing. But when she had told all the interesting tales she could think of, cleared away the remains of the feast, and played with the doll until she was sick of the sight of it, she began to be heartily tired of Girlie's companionship.

"She's such a baby," she said to herself, impatiently. "She doesn't know much more than a kitten." It seemed to her that the third long hour never would drag to an end. But Girlie evidently enjoyed it. When the carriage came to take her home, she said, enthusiastically:

"I've had such a good time this morning that I'm coming over every single day while you're here. I can't ask you over to our house 'cause my grandma is so sick it wouldn't be any fun. We just have to tiptoe around and not laugh out loud. But I don't mind doing all the visiting."

"Oh, it will spoil everything!" groaned Mary to herself, as she ran up-stairs when Girlie was at last out of sight. She felt that nothing could compensate her for the loss of the whole morning, and the thought of losing any more precious time in that way was unendurable.

Mrs. Sherman met her in the hall, and pinched her cheek playfully as she passed her. "You make a charming little hostess, my dear," she said. "I looked out several times, and you were so absorbed with your play that it made me wish that I could be a little girl again, and join you with my poor old Nancy Blanche doll and my grand Amanthis that papa brought me from New Orleans. I'll have to resurrect them for you out of the attic, for I'm afraid it has been stupid for you here, with nobody your own age."

"Oh, no'm! Don't! Please don't!" protested Mary, a worried look on her honest little face. She was about to add, "I can't bear dolls any more. I only played with them to please Girlie," when Lloyd came out of her room with a letter.

"It's from the bride-to-be, mothah," she called, waving it gaily.

"She'll be heah day aftah to-morrow, so we can begin to put the finishing touches to her room. The day she comes I'm going to take the girls ovah to Rollington to get some long sprays of bride's wreath. Mrs. Crisp has two big bushes of it, white as snow. It will look so cool and lovely, everything in the room all green and white."

Mary stole away to her room, ready to cry. If every morning had to be spent with that tiresome Dinsmore child, she might as well have stayed on the desert.

"I simply have to get rid of her in some way," she mused. "It won't do to snub her, and I don't know any other way. I wish I could see Holland for about five minutes. He'd think of a plan."

So absorbed was she in her problem that she forgot to ask whether the kid or the satin slippers had been chosen, and she went down to lunch still revolving her trouble in her mind. On the dining-room wall opposite her place at table were two fine old engravings, illustrating the fable of the famous dinners given by the Fox and the Stork. In the first the stork strove vainly to fill its bill at the flat dish from which the fox lapped eagerly, while in the companion picture the fox sat by disconsolate while the stork dipped into the high slim pitcher, which the hungry guest could not reach.

Mary had noticed the pictures in a casual way every time she took a seat at the table, for the beast and the bird were old acquaintances. She had learned La Fontaine's version of the fable one time to recite at school. To-day, with the problem in her mind of how to rid herself of an unwelcome guest, they suddenly took on a new meaning.

"I'll do just the way the stork did," she thought, gleefully. "This morning Girlie had everything her way, and we played little silly baby games till I felt as flat as the dish that fox is eating out of. But she had a beautiful time. To-morrow morning I'm going to be stork, and make my conversation so deep she can't get her little baby mind into it at all. I'll be awfully polite, but I'll hunt up the longest words I can find in the dictionary, and talk about the books I've read, and she'll have such a stupid time she won't want to come again."

The course of action once settled upon, Mary fell to work with her usual energy. While the girls were taking their daily siesta, she dressed early and went down into the library. If it had not been for the fear of missing something, she would have spent much of her time in that attractive room. Books looked down so invitingly from the many shelves. All the June magazines lay on the library table, their pages still uncut. Everybody had been too busy to look at them. She hesitated a moment over the tempting array, but remembering her purpose, grimly passed them by and opened the big dictionary.

Rob found her still poring over it, pencil and paper in hand, when he looked into the room an hour later.

"What's up now?" he asked.

She evaded his question at first, but, afraid that he would tease her before the girls about her thirst for knowledge and her study of the dictionary, and that that might lead to the thwarting of her plans, she suddenly decided to take him into her confidence.

"Well," she began, solemnly, "you know mostly I loathe dolls. Sometimes I do dress Hazel Lee's for her, but I don't like to play with them regularly any more as I used to,—talk for them and all that. But Girlie Dinsmore was here this morning, and I had to do it because she is company. She had such a good time that she said she was coming over here every single morning while I'm here. I just can't have my lovely visit spoiled that way. The bride is coming day after to-morrow, and she'll be opening her presents and showing her trousseau to the girls, and I wouldn't miss it for anything. So I've made up my mind I'll be just as polite as possible, but I'll do as the stork did in the fable; make my entertainment so deep she won't enjoy it. I'm hunting up the longest words I can find and learning their definitions, so that I can use them properly."

Rob, looking over her shoulder, laughed to see the list she had chosen:

"Indefatigability, Juxtaposition, Loquaciousness, Pabulum, Peregrinate, Longevous."

"You see," explained Mary, "sometimes there is a quotation after the word from some author, so I've copied a lot of them to use, instead of making up sentences myself. Here's one from Shakespeare about alacrity. And here's one from Arbuthnot, whoever he was, that will make her stare."

She traced the sentence with her forefinger, for Rob's glance to follow: "Instances of longevity are chiefly among the abstemious."

"Girlie won't have any more idea of what I'm talking about than a jay-bird."

To Mary's astonishment, the laugh with which Rob received her confidence was so long and loud it ended in a whoop of amusement, and when he had caught his breath he began again in such an infectious way that the girls up-stairs heard it and joined in. Then Lloyd leaned over the banister to call:

"What's the mattah, Rob? You all seem to be having a mighty funny time down there. Save your circus for us. We'll be down in a few minutes."

"This is just a little private side-show of Mary's and mine," answered Rob, going off into another peal of laughter at sight of Mary's solemn face. There was nothing funny in the situation to her whatsoever.

"Oh, don't tell, Mister Rob," she begged. "Please don't tell. Joyce might think it was impolite, and would put a stop to it. It seems funny to you, but when you think of my whole lovely visit spoiled that way—"

She stopped abruptly, so much in earnest that her voice broke and her eyes filled with tears.

Instantly Rob's laughter ceased, and he begged her pardon in such a grave, kind way, assuring her that her confidence should be respected, that her admiration of him went up several more degrees. When the girls came down, he could not be prevailed upon to tell them what had sent him off into such fits of laughter. "Just Mary's entertaining remarks," was all he would say, looking across at her with a meaning twinkle in his eyes. She immediately retired into the background as soon as the older girls appeared, but she sat admiring every word Rob said, and watching every movement.

"He's the very nicest man I ever saw," she said to herself. "He treats me as if I were grown up, and I really believe he likes to hear me talk."

Once when they were arranging for a tennis game for the next morning, he crossed the room with an amused smile, to say to her in a low aside: "I've thought of something to help along the stork's cause. Bring the little fox over to the tennis-court to watch the game. If she doesn't find that sufficiently stupid, and you run short of big words, read aloud to her, and tell her that is what you intend to do every day."

Such a pleased, gratified smile flashed over Mary's face that Betty exclaimed, curiously: "I certainly would like to know what mischief you two are planning. You laugh every time you look at each other."

Girlie Dinsmore arrived promptly next morning, trunk, doll, and all, expecting to plunge at once into an absorbing game of lady-come-to-see. But Mary so impressed her with the honor that had been conferred upon them by Mr. Moore's special invitation to watch the tennis game that she was somewhat bewildered. She dutifully followed her resolute hostess to the tennis-court, and took a seat beside her with Evangeline clasped in her arms. Neither of the children had watched a game before, and Girlie, not being able to understand a single move, soon found it insufferably stupid. But Mary became more and more interested in watching a tall, athletic figure in outing flannels and white shoes, who swung his racket with the deftness of an expert, and who flashed an amused smile at her over the net occasionally, as if he understood the situation and was enjoying it with her.

Several times when Rob's playing brought him near the seat where the two children sat, he went into unaccountable roars of laughter, for which the amazed girls scolded him soundly, when he refused to explain. One time was when he overheard a scrap of conversation. Girlie had suggested a return to the porch and the play-house, and Mary responded, graciously:



"Oh, we did all that yesterday morning, and I think that even in the matter of playing dolls one ought to be abstemious. Don't you? You know Arbuthnot says that 'instances of longevity are chiefly among the abstemious,' and I certainly want to be longevous."

A startled expression crept into Girlie's pale blue eyes, but she only sat back farther on the seat and tightened her clasp on Evangeline. The next time Rob sauntered within hearing distance, a discussion of literature was in progress, Mary was asking:

"Have you ever read 'Old Curiosity Shop?'"

The flaxen curls shook slowly in the motion that betokened she had not.

"Nothing of Dickens or Scott or Irving or Cooper?"

Still the flaxen curls shook nothing but no.

"Then what have you read, may I ask?" The superior tone of Mary's question made it seem that she was twenty years older than the child at her side, instead of only two.

"I like the Dotty Dimple books," finally admitted Girlie. "Mamma read me all of them and several of the Prudy books, and I have read half of 'Flaxie Frizzle' my own self."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mary, in a tone expressing enlightenment. "I see! Nothing but juvenile books! No wonder that, with such mental pabulum, you don't care for anything but dolls! Now when I was your age, I had read 'The Vicar of Wakefield' and 'Pride and Prejudice' and Leather-stocking Tales, and all sorts of things. Probably that is why I lost my taste for dolls so early. Wouldn't you like me to read to you awhile every morning?"

The offer was graciousness itself, but it implied such a lack on Girlie's part that she felt vaguely uncomfortable. She sat digging the toe of her slipper against the leg of the bench.

"I don't know," she stammered finally. "Maybe I can't come often. It makes me wigglesome to sit still too long and listen."

"We might try it this morning to see how you like it," persisted Mary. "I brought a copy of Longfellow out from the house, and thought you might like to hear the poem of 'Evangeline,' as long as your doll is named that."

Rob heard no more, for the game called him to another part of the court, but Mary's plan was a success. When the Dinsmore carriage came, Girlie announced that she wouldn't be over the next day, and maybe not the one after that. She didn't know for sure when she could come.

Rob stayed to lunch. As he passed Mary on the steps, he stooped to the level of her ear to say in a laughing undertone: "Congratulations, Miss Stork. I see your plan worked grandly."

Elated by her success and the feeling of good-comradeship which this little secret with Rob gave her, Mary skipped up on to the porch, well pleased with herself. But the next instant there was a curious change in her feeling. Lloyd, tall and graceful in her becoming tennis suit, was standing on the steps taking leave of some of the players. With hospitable insistence she was urging them to stay to lunch, and there was something in the sweet graciousness of the young hostess that made Mary uncomfortable. She felt that she had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. The Princess never would have stooped to treat a guest as she had treated Girlie. Her standard of hospitality was too high to allow such a breach of hospitality.

Mary had carried her point, but she felt that if Lloyd knew how she had played stork, she would consider her ill-bred. The thought worried her for days.



CHAPTER VII.

THE COMING OF THE BRIDE

Early in the June morning Mary awoke, feeling as if it were Christmas or Fourth of July or some great gala occasion. She lay there a moment, trying to think what pleasant thing was about to happen. Then she remembered that it was the day on which the bride was to arrive. Not only that,—before the sun went down, the best man would be at The Locusts also.

She raised herself on her elbow to look at Joyce, in the white bed across from hers. She was sound asleep, so Mary snuggled down on her pillow again, and lay quite still. If Joyce had been awake, Mary would have begun a long conversation about Phil Tremont. Instead, she began recalling to herself the last time she had seen him. It was three years ago, down by the beehives, and she had had no idea he was going away until he came to the Wigwam to bid them all good-by. And Joyce and Lloyd were away, so he had left a message for them with her. She thought it queer then, and she had wondered many times since why his farewell to the girls should have been a message about the old gambling god, Alaka. She remembered every word of it, even the tones of his voice as he said: "Try to remember just these words, please, Mary. Tell them that 'Alaka has lost his precious turquoises, but he will win them back again some day.' Can you remember to say just that?"

He must have thought she wasn't much more than a baby to repeat it so carefully to her several times, as if he were teaching her a lesson. Well, to be sure, she was only eleven then, and she had almost cried when she begged him not to go away, and insisted on knowing when he was coming back. He had looked away toward old Camelback Mountain with a strange, sorry look on his face as he answered:

"Not till I've learned your lesson—to be 'inflexible.' When I'm strong enough to keep stiff in the face of any temptation, then I'll come back, little Vicar." Then he had stooped and kissed her hastily on both cheeks, and started off down the road, with her watching him through a blur of tears, because it seemed that all the good times in the world had suddenly come to an end. Away down the road he had turned to look back and wave his hat, and she had caught up her white sunbonnet and swung it high by its one limp string.

Afterward, when she went back to the swing by the beehives, she recalled all the old stories she had ever heard of knights who went out into the world to seek their fortunes, and waved farewell to some ladye fair in her watch-tower. She felt, in a vague way, that she had been bidden farewell by a brave knight errant. Although she was burning with curiosity when she delivered the message about the turquoises and Alaka, and wondered why Lloyd and Joyce exchanged such meaning glances, something kept her from asking questions, and she had gone on wondering all these years what it meant, and why there was such a sorry look in his eyes when he gazed out toward the old Camelback Mountain. Now, in the wisdom of her fourteen years, she began to suspect what the trouble had been, and resolved to ask Joyce for the solution of the mystery.

Now that Phil was twenty years old and doing a man's work in the world, she supposed she ought to call him Mr. Tremont, or, at least, Mr. Phil. Probably in his travels, with all the important things that a civil engineer has to think of, he had forgotten her and the way he had romped with her at the Wigwam, and how he had saved her life the time the Indian chased her. Being the bridegroom's brother and best man at the wedding, he would scarcely notice her. Or, if he did cast a glance in her direction, she had grown so much probably he never would recognize her. Still, if he should remember her, she wanted to appear at her best advantage, and she began considering what was the best her wardrobe afforded.

She lay there some time trying to decide whether she should be all in white when she met him, or in the dress with the little sprigs of forget-me-nots sprinkled over it. White was appropriate for all occasions, still the forget-me-nots would be suggestive. Then she remembered her mother's remark about that shade of blue being a trying one for her to wear. That recalled Mom Beck's prescription for beautifying the complexion. Nothing, so the old colored woman declared, was so good for one's face as washing it in dew before the sun had touched the grass, at the same time repeating a hoodoo rhyme. Mary had been intending to try it, but never could waken early enough.

Now it was only a little after five. Slipping out of bed, she drew aside the curtain. Smoke was rising from the chimney down in the servants' quarters, and the sun was streaming red across the lawn. But over by the side of the house, in the shadow of Hero's monument, the dew lay sparkling like diamonds on the daisies and clover that bloomed there—the only place on the lawn where the sun had not yet touched.

Thrusting her bare feet into the little red Turkish slippers beside her bed, Mary caught up her kimono lying over a chair. It was a long, Oriental affair, Cousin Kate's Christmas gift; a mixture of gay colors and a pattern of Japanese fans, and so beautiful in Mary's eyes that she had often bemoaned the fact that she was not a Japanese lady so that she could wear the gorgeous garment in public. It seemed too beautiful to be wasted on the privacy of her room.

Fastening it together with three of Joyce's little gold pins, she stole down the stairway. Mom Beck was busy in the dining-room, and the doors and windows stood open. Stepping out of one of the long French windows that opened on the side porch, Mary ran across to the monument. It was a glorious June morning. The myriads of roses were doubly sweet with the dew in their hearts. A Kentucky cardinal flashed across the lawn ahead of her, darting from one locust-tree to another like a bit of live flame.

The little red Turkish slippers chased lightly over the grass till they reached the shadow of the monument. Then stooping, Mary passed her hands over the daisies and clover, catching up the dewdrops in her pink palms, and rubbing them over her face as she repeated Mom Beck's charm:

"Beauty come, freckles go! Dewdops, make me white as snow!"

The dew on her face felt so cool and fresh that she tried it again, then several times more. Then she stooped over farther and buried her face in the wet grass, repeating the rhyme again with her eyes shut and in the singsong chant in which she often intoned things, without giving heed to what she was uttering. Suddenly, in the midst of this joyful abandon, an amused exclamation made her lift her head a little and open her eyes.

"By all the powers! What are you up to now, Miss Stork?"

Mary's head came up out of the wet grass with a jerk. Then her face burned an embarrassed crimson, for striding along the path toward her was Bob Moore, cutting across lots from Oaklea. He was bareheaded, and swinging along as if it were a pleasure merely to be alive on such a morning.

She sprang to her feet, so mortified at being caught in this secret quest for beauty that her embarrassment left her speechless. Then, remembering the way she was dressed, she sank down on the grass again, and pulled her kimono as far as possible over the little bare feet in the red slippers.

There was no need for her to answer his question. The rhyme she had been chanting was sufficient explanation.

"I thought you said," he began, teasingly, "that you were to have your innings when you were a grandmother; that you didn't care for beauty now if you could have a face like a benediction then."

"Oh, I didn't say that I didn't care!" cried Mary, crouching closer against the monument, and putting her arm across her face to hide it. "It's because I care so much that I'm always doing silly things and getting caught. I just wish the earth could open and swallow me!" she wailed.

Her head was bowed now till it was resting on her knees. Rob looked down on the little bunch of misery in the gay kimono, thinking he had never seen such a picture of woe. He could not help smiling, but he felt mean at having been the cause of her distress, and tried to think of something comforting to say.

"Sakes alive, child! That's nothing to feel bad about. Bathing your face in May-day dew is an old English custom that the prettiest girls in the Kingdom used to follow. I ought to apologize for intruding, but I didn't suppose any one was up. I just came over to say that some business for grandfather will take me to town on the earliest train, so that I can't be on hand when the best man arrives. I didn't want to wake up the entire household by telephoning, so I thought I'd step over and leave a message with Alec or some of them. If you'll tell Lloyd, I'll be much obliged."

"All right, I'll tell her," answered Mary, in muffled tones, without raising her head from her knees. She was battling back the tears, and felt that she could never face the world again. She waited till she was sure Rob was out of sight, and then, springing up, ran for the shelter of her room. As she stole up the stairs, her eyes were so blinded with tears that she could hardly see the steps; tears of humiliation, that Rob, of all people, whose good opinion she valued, should have discovered her in a situation that made her appear silly and vain.

Luckily for the child's peace of mind, Betty had also wakened early that morning, and was taking advantage of the quiet hours before breakfast to attend to her letter-writing. Through her open door she caught sight of the woebegone little figure slipping past, and the next instant Mary found herself in the white and gold room with Betty's arm around her, and her tearful face pressed against a sympathetic shoulder. Little by little Betty coaxed from her the cause of her tears, then sat silent, patting her hand, as she wondered what she could say to console her.

To the older girl it seemed a matter to smile over, and the corners of her mouth did dimple a little, until she realized that to Mary's supersensitive nature this was no trifle, and that she was suffering keenly from it.

"Oh, I'm so ashamed," sobbed Mary. "I never want to look Mister Rob in the face again. I'd rather go home and miss the wedding than meet him any more."

"Nonsense," said Betty, lightly. "Now you're making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Probably Rob will never give the matter a second thought, and he would be amazed if he thought you did. I've heard you say you wished you could be just like Lloyd. Do you know, her greatest charm to me is that she never seems to think of the impression she is making on other people. Now, if she should decide that her complexion would be better for a wash in the dew, she would go ahead and wash it, no matter who caught her at it, and, first thing you know, all the Valley would be following her example.

"I'm going to preach you a little sermon now, because I've found out your one fault. It isn't very big yet, but, if you don't nip it in the bud, it will be like Meddlesome Matty's,—

"'Which, like a cloud before the skies, Hid all her better qualities.'

"You are self-conscious, Mary. Always thinking about the impression you are making on people, and so eager to please that it makes you miserable if you think you fall short of any of their standards. I knew a girl at school who let her sensitiveness to other people's opinions run away with her. She was so anxious for her friends to be pleased with her that she couldn't be natural. If anybody glanced in the direction of her head, she immediately began to fix her side-combs, or if they seemed to be noticing her dress, she felt her belt and looked down at herself to see if anything was wrong. Half the time they were not looking at her at all, and not even giving her a thought. And I've known her to agonize for days over some trifle, some remark she had made or some one had made to her, that every one but her had forgotten. She developed into a dreadful bore, because she never could forget herself, and was always looking at her affairs through a magnifying-glass.

"Now if you should keep out of Rob's way after this, and act as if you had done something to be ashamed of, which you have not, don't you see that your very actions would remind him of what you want him to forget? But if when you meet him you are your own bright, cheerful, friendly little self, this morning's scene will fade into a dim background."

Only half-convinced, Mary nodded that she understood, but still proceeded to wipe her eyes at intervals.

"Then, there's another thing," continued Betty. "If you sit and brood over your mortification, it will spread all over your sky like a black cloud, till it will seem bigger than any of the good times you have had. In the dear old garden at Warwick Hall there is a sun-dial that has this inscription on it, 'I only mark the hours that shine,' So I am going to give you that as a text. Now, dear, that is the end of my sermon, but here is the application."

She pointed to a row of little white books on the shelf above her desk, all bound in kid, with her initials stamped on the back in gold. "Those are my good-times books. 'I only mark the hours that shine' in them, and when things go wrong and I get discouraged over my mistakes, I glance through them and find that there's lots more to laugh over than cry about, and I'm going to recommend the same course to you. Godmother gave me the first volume when I came to the first house-party, and the little record gave me so much pleasure that I've gone on adding volume after volume. Suppose you try it, dear. Will you, if I give you a book?"

"Yes," answered Mary, who had heard of these books before, and longed for a peep into them. She had her wish now, for, taking them down from the shelf, Betty read an extract here and there, to illustrate what she meant. Presently, to their astonishment, they heard Mom Beck knocking at Lloyd's door to awaken her, and Betty realized with a start that she had been reading over an hour. Her letters were unanswered, but she had accomplished something better. Mary's tears had dried, as she listened to these accounts of their frolics at boarding-school and their adventures abroad, and in her interest in them her own affairs had taken their proper proportion. She was no longer heart-broken over having been discovered by Rob, and she was determined to overcome the sensitiveness and self-consciousness which Betty had pointed out as her great fault.

As she rose to go, Betty opened a drawer in her desk and took out a square, fat diary, bound in red morocco. "One of the girls gave me this last Christmas," she said. "I never have used it, because I want to keep my journals uniform in size and binding, and I'll be so glad to have you take it and start a record of your own, if you will."

"Oh, I'll begin this very morning!" cried Mary, in delight, throwing her arms around Betty's neck with an impulsive kiss, and trying to express her thanks.

"Then wait till I write my text in it," said Betty, "so that it will always recall my sermon. I've talked to you as if I were your grandmother, haven't I?"

"You've made me feel a lot more comfortable," answered Mary, humbly, with another kiss as Betty handed her the book. On the fly-leaf she had written her own name and Mary's and the inscription borne by the old sun-dial in Warwick Hall garden:

"I only mark the hours that shine."

It was after lunch before Mary found a moment in which to begin her record, and then it was in unconscious imitation of Betty's style that she wrote the events of the morning. Probably she would not have gone into details and copied whole conversations if she had not heard the extracts from Betty's diaries. Betty was writing for practice as well as with the purpose of storing away pleasant memories, so it was often with the spirit of the novelist that she made her entries.

"It seems hopeless to go back to the beginning," wrote Mary, "and tell all that has happened so far, so I shall begin with this morning. Soon after breakfast we went to Rollington in the carriage, Joyce and Betty and I on the back seat, and Lloyd in front with the coachman. And Mrs. Crisp cut down nearly a whole bushful of bridal wreath to decorate Eugenia's room with. When we got back May Lily had just finished putting up fresh curtains in the room, almost as fine and thin as frost-work. The furniture is all white, and the walls a soft, cool green, and the rugs like that dark velvety moss that grows in the deepest woods. When we had finished filling the vases and jardinieres, the room itself all snowy white and green made you think of a bush of bridal wreath.

"We were barely through with that when it was time for Lloyd and Aunt Elizabeth to go to the station to meet Eugenia. There wasn't room for the rest of us in the carriage, so Betty and Joyce and I hung out of the windows and watched for them, and Betty and Joyce talked about the other time Eugenia came, when they walked up and down under the locusts waiting for her and wondering what she would be like. When she did come, they were half-afraid of her, she was so stylish and young-ladified, and ordered her maid about in such a superior way.

"Betty said it was curious how snippy girls of that age can be sometimes, and then turn out to be such fine women afterward, when they outgrow their snippiness and snobbishness. Then she told us a lot we had never heard about the school Eugenia went to in Germany to take a training in housekeeping, and so many interesting things about her that I was all in a quiver of curiosity to see her.

"When we heard the carriage coming, Betty and Joyce tore down-stairs to meet her, but I just hung farther out of the window. And, oh, but she was pretty and stylish and tall—and just as Betty had said, patrician-looking, with her dusky hair and big dark eyes. She is the Spanish type of beauty. She swept into the house so grandly, with her maid following with her satchels (the same old Eliot who was here before), that I thought for a moment maybe she was as stuck-up as ever. But when she saw her old room, she acted just like a happy little girl, ready to cry and laugh in the same breath because everything had been made so beautiful for her coming. While she was still in the midst of admiring everything, she sat right down on the bed and tore off her gloves, so that she could open the queer-looking parcel she carried. I had thought maybe it was something too valuable to put in the satchels, but it was only a new kind of egg-beater she had seen in a show-window on her way from one depot to another. You would have thought from the way she carried on that she had found a wonderful treasure. And in the midst of showing us that she exclaimed:

"'Oh, girls, what do you think? I met the dearest old lady on the sleeper, and she gave me a receipt for a new kind of salad. That makes ten kinds of salad that I know how to make. Oh, I just can't wait to tell you about our little love of a house! It's all furnished and waiting for us. Papa and I were out to look all over it the day I started, and everything was in place but the refrigerator, and Stuart had already ordered one sent out.'

"Then Lloyd opened the closet door and called her attention to the great pile of packages waiting to be opened. She flew at them and called us all to help, and for a little while Mom Beck and Eliot were kept busy picking up strings and wrapping-paper and cotton and excelsior. When we were through, the bed and the chairs and mantel and two extra tables that had been brought in were piled with the most beautiful things I ever saw. I never dreamed there were such lovely things in the world as some of the beaten silver and hand-painted china and Tiffany glass. There was a jewelled fan, and all sorts of things in gold and mother-of-pearl, and there was some point lace that she said was more suitable for a queen than a young American girl. Her father has so many wealthy friends, and they all sent presents.

"Opening the bundles was so much fun,—like a continual surprise-party, Betty said, or a hundred Christmases rolled into one. Between times when Eugenia wasn't exclaiming over how lovely everything was, she was telling us how the house was furnished, and what a splendid fellow Stuart is, and how wild she is for us to know him. I had never heard a bride talk before, and she was so happy that somehow it made you feel that getting married was the most beautiful thing in the world.

"One of the first things she did when she opened her suit-case was to take out a picture of Stuart. It was a miniature on ivory in a locket of Venetian gold, because it was in Venice he had proposed to her. After she had shown it to us, she put it in the centre of her dressing-table, with the white flowers all around it, as if it had been some sort of shrine. There was a look in her eyes that made me think of the picture in Betty's room of a nun laying lilies on an altar.

"It is after luncheon now, and she has gone to her room to rest awhile. So have the other girls. But I couldn't sleep. The days are slipping by too fast for me to waste any time that way."

The house was quiet when Mary closed her journal. Joyce was still asleep on the bed, and through the open door she could see Betty, tilted back in a big chair, nodding over a magazine. She concluded it would be a good time to dash off a letter to Holland, but with a foresight which prompted her to be ready for any occasion, she decided to dress first for the evening. Tiptoeing around the room, she brushed her hair in the new way Mom Beck had taught her, and, taking out her prettiest white dress, proceeded to array herself in honor of the best man's coming. Then she rummaged in the tray of her trunk till she found her pink coral necklace and fan-chain, and, with a sigh of satisfaction that she was ready for any emergency, seated herself at her letter-writing.

She had written only a page, however, when the clock on the stairs chimed four. The deep tones echoing through the hall sent Lloyd bouncing up from her couch, her hair falling over her shoulders and her long kimono tripping her at every step, as she ran into Joyce's room.

"What are we going to do?" she cried in dismay. "I ovahslept myself, and now it's foah o'clock, and Phil's train due in nine minutes. The carriage is at the doah and none of us dressed to go to meet him. I wrote that the entiah bridal party would be there."

Joyce sprang up in a dazed sort of way, and began putting on her slippers. The bridesmaids had talked so much about the grand welcome the best man was to receive on his entrance to the Valley that, half-awake as she was, she could not realize that it was too late to carry out their plans.

"Oh, it's no use trying to get ready now," said Lloyd, in a disappointed tone. "We couldn't dress and get to the station in time to save ou' lives." Then her glance fell on Mary, sitting at her desk in all her brave array of pink ribbons and corals.

"Why, Mary can go!" she cried, in a relieved tone. "I had forgotten that she knows Phil as well as we do. Run on, that's a deah! Don't stop for a hat! You won't need it in the carriage. Tell him that you're the maid of honah on this occasion!"

It was all over so quickly, the rapid drive down the avenue, the quick dash up to the station as the train came puffing past, that Mary had little time to rehearse the part she had been bidden to play. She was so afraid that Phil would not recognize her that she wondered if she ought not to begin by introducing herself. She pictured the scene in her mind as they rolled along, unconscious that she was smiling and bowing into empty air, as she rehearsed the speech with which she intended to impress him. She would be as dignified and gracious as the Princess herself; not at all like the hoydenish child of eleven who had waved her sunbonnet at him in parting three years before.

The sight of the train as it slowed up sent a queer inward quiver of expectancy through her, and her cheeks were flushed with eagerness as she leaned forward watching for him. With a nervous gesture, she put her hand up to her hair-ribbons to make sure that her bows were in place, and then clutched the coral necklace. Then Betty's sermon flashed across her mind, and the thought that she had done just like the self-conscious girl at school brought a distressed pucker between her eyebrows. But the next instant she forgot all about it. She forgot the princess-like way in which she was to step from the carriage, the dignity with which she was to offer Phil her hand, and the words wherewith she was to welcome him. She had caught sight of a wide-brimmed gray hat over the heads of the crowd, and a face, bronzed and handsome, almost as dear in its familiar outlines as Jack's or Holland's. Her carefully rehearsed actions flew to the winds, as, regardless of the strangers all about, she sprang from the carriage and ran along bareheaded in the sun. And Phil, glancing around him for the bridal party that was to meet him, was surprised beyond measure when this little apparition from the Arizona Wigwam caught him by the hand.

"Bless my soul, it's the little Vicar!" he exclaimed. "Why, it's like getting back home to see you! And how you've grown, and how really civilized you are!"

So he had remembered her. He was glad to see her. With her face glowing and her feet fairly dancing, she led him to the carriage, pouring out a flood of information as they went, about The Locusts and the wedding and the people they passed, and how lovely everything was in the Valley, till he said, with a twinkle in his eyes: "You're the same enthusiastic little soul that you used to be, aren't you? I hope you'll speak as good a word for me at The Locusts as you did at Lee's ranch. I am taking it as a good omen that you were sent to conduct me into this happy land. You made a success of it that other time; somehow I'm sure you will this time."

All the way to the house Mary sat and beamed on him as she talked, thinking how much older he looked, and yet how friendly and brotherly he still was. She introduced him to Mrs. Sherman with a proud, grandmotherly air of proprietorship, and took a personal pride in every complimentary thing said about him afterward, as if she were responsible for his good behavior, and was pleased with the way he was "showing off."

Rob came over as usual in the evening. Phil was not there at first. He and Eugenia were strolling about the grounds. Mary, sitting in a hammock on the porch, was impatient for them to come in, for she wanted to see what impression he would make on Rob, whom she had been thinking lately was the nicest man she ever met. She wanted to see them together to contrast the two, for they seemed wonderfully alike in size and general appearance. In actions, too, Mary thought, remembering how they both had teased her.

She had not seen Rob since their unhappy encounter early that morning, when she had been so overcome with mortification; and if Betty had not been on the porch also, she would have found it hard to stay and face him. But she wanted to show Betty that she had taken her little sermon to heart. Then, besides, the affair did not look so big, after all that had happened during this exciting day.

As they waited, Joyce joined them, and presently they heard Lloyd coming through the hall. She was singing a verse from Ingelow's "Songs of Seven:"

"'There is no dew left on the daisies and clover. There is no rain left in the heaven. I've said my seven times over and over— Seven times one are seven.'"

Then she began again, "'There is no dew left on the daisies and clover—'" Rob turned to Mary. "I wonder why," he said, meaningly.

The red flashed up into Mary's face and she made no audible answer, but Joyce, turning suddenly, saw to her horror that Mary had made a saucy face at him and thrust out her tongue like a naughty child.

"Why, Mary Ware!" she began, in a shocked tone, but Betty interrupted with a laugh. "Let her alone, Joyce; he richly deserved it. He was teasing her."

"Betty was right," thought Mary afterward. "It was better to make fun of his teasing than to run off and cry because he happened to mention the subject. If I had done that, he never would have said to Betty afterward that I was the jolliest little thing that ever came over the pike. How much better this day has ended than it began."



CHAPTER VIII.

AT THE BEECHES

The invitation came by telephone while the family was at breakfast next morning. Would the house-party at The Locusts join the house-party at The Beeches in giving a series of tableaux at their lawn fete that night? If so, would the house-party at The Locusts proceed immediately to The Beeches to spend the morning in the rehearsing of tableaux, the selection of costumes, the manufacture of paper roses, and the pleasure of each other's honorable company in the partaking of a picnic-lunch under the trees?

There was an enthusiastic acceptance from all except Eugenia, who, tired from her long journey and with many important things to attend to, begged to be left behind for a quiet day with her cousin Elizabeth. Mary, tormented by a fear that maybe she was not included in the invitation, since she was a child, and all the guests at The Beeches were grown, could scarcely finish her breakfast in her excitement. But long before the girls were ready to start, her fears were set at rest by the arrival of Elise Walton in her pony-cart. She wanted Mary to drive to one of the neighbors with her, to borrow a bonnet and shawl over fifty years old, which were to figure in one of the tableaux.

Elise had not been attracted by Mary's appearance the day she met her in the restaurant and was not sure that she would care for her. It was only her hospitable desire to be nice to a guest in the Valley that made her comply so willingly to her mother's request to show her some especial attention. Mary, spoiled by the companionship of the older girls for the society of those her own age, was afraid that Elise would be a repetition of Girlie Dinsmore; but before they had gone half a mile together they were finding each other so vastly entertaining that by the time they reached The Beeches they felt like old friends.

It was Mary's first sight of the place, except the glimpse she had caught through the trees the morning they passed on their way to Rollington. As the pony-cart rattled up the wide carriage drive which swept around in front of the house, she felt as if she were riding straight into a beautiful old Southern story of ante-bellum days. Back into the times when people had leisure to make hospitality their chief business in life, and could afford for every day to be a holiday. When there were always guests under the spreading rooftree of the great house, and laughter and plenty in the servants' quarters. The sound of a banjo and a negro melody somewhere in the background heightened the effect of that illusion.

The wide front porch seemed full of people. Allison and Kitty looked up with a word of greeting as the two girls came up, one carrying the bonnet and the other the shawl, but nobody seemed to think it necessary to introduce Elise's little friend to the other guests. It would have been an embarrassing ordeal for her, for there were so many strangers. Mary recognized the two young lieutenants.

With the help of a pretty brunette in white, whom Elise whispered was Miss Bonham from Lexington, they were rigging up some kind of a coat of mail for Lieutenant Logan to wear in one of the tableaux. Ranald, with a huge sheet of cardboard and the library shears, was manufacturing a pair of giant scissors, half as long as himself, which a blonde in blue was waiting to cover with tin foil. She was singing coon songs while she waited, to the accompaniment of a mandolin, and in such a gay, rollicking way, that every one was keeping time either with hand or foot.

"That is Miss Bernice Howe," answered Elise, in response to Mary's whispered question. "She lives here in the Valley. And that's Malcolm MacIntyre, my cousin, who is sitting beside her. That's his brother Keith helping Aunt Allison with the programme cards."

Mary stared at the two young men, vaguely disappointed. They were the two little knights of Kentucky, but they were grown up, like all the other heroes and heroines she had looked forward to meeting. She told herself that she might have expected it, for she knew that Malcolm was Joyce's age; but she had associated them so long with the handsome little fellows in the photograph Lloyd had, clad in the knightly costumes of King Arthur's time, that it was hard to recognize them now, in these up-to-date, American college boys, who had long ago discarded their knightly disguises.

"And that," said Elise, as another young man came out of the house with a sheet of music in his hand for Miss Howe, "is Mister Alex Shelby. He lives in Louisville, but he comes out to the Valley all the time to see Bernice. I'll tell you about them while we drive over to Mrs. Bisbee's.

"It's this way," she began a few moments later, as they rattled down the road; "Bernice asked Allison if Mister Shelby couldn't be in one of the tableaux. Allison said yes, that they had intended to ask him before she spoke of it; that they had decided to ask him to be the boatman in the tableau of 'Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat.' But when Bernice found that Lloyd had already been asked to be Elaine, she was furious. She said she was just as good as engaged to him, or something of the sort, I don't know exactly what. And she knew, if Lloyd had a chance to monopolize him in that beautiful tableau, what it would lead to. It wouldn't be the first time that Lloyd had quietly stepped in and taken possession of her particular friends. She made such a fuss about it, that Allison finally said she'd change, and make Malcolm take the part of boatman, and give Alex the part they had intended for Malcolm, even if they didn't fit as well."

"The hateful thing!" sputtered Mary, indignantly. "I don't see how she can insinuate such mean things about any one as sweet and beautiful as Lloyd is."

"I don't either," agreed Elise, "but Allison says it is true that everybody who has ever started out as a special friend of Bernice, men I mean, have ended by thinking the most of Lloyd. But everybody knows that it is simply because she is more attractive than Bernice. As Ranald says Lloyd isn't a girl to fish for attention, and that Bernice would have more if she didn't show the fellows that she was after them with a hook. Don't you tell Lloyd I told you all this," warned Elise.

"Oh, I wouldn't think of doing such a thing!" cried Mary. "It would hurt her dreadfully to know that anybody talked so mean about her. I wouldn't be the one to repeat it, for worlds!"

Left to hold the pony while Elise went in at Mrs. Bisbee's, Mary sat thinking of the snake she had discovered in her Eden. It was a rude shock to find that every one did not admire and love the "Queen of Hearts," who to her was without fault or flaw. All the rest of that day and evening, she could not look in Bernice Howe's direction, without a savage desire to scratch her. Once, when she heard her address Lloyd as "dearie," she could hardly keep from crying out, "Oh, you sly, two-faced creature!"

Lloyd and her guests arrived on the scene while Mary was away in the pony-cart on another borrowing expedition. All of the tableaux, except two, were simple in setting, requiring only the costumes that could be furnished by the chests of the neighborhood attics. But those two kept everybody busy all morning long. One was the reproduction of a famous painting called June, in which seven garlanded maidens in Greek costumes posed in a bewitching rose bower. Quantities of roses were needed for the background, great masses of them that would not fade and droop; and since previous experience had proved that artificial flowers may be used with fine stage effect in the glare of red foot-lights the whole place was bursting into tissue-paper bloom. The girls cut and folded the myriad petals needed, the boys wired them, and a couple of little pickaninnies sent out to gather foliage, piled armfuls of young oak-leaves on the porch to twine into long conventional garlands, like the ones in the painting.

Agnes Waring had come over to help with the Greek costumes, and since the long folds of cheesecloth could be held in place by girdles, basting threads, and pins, the gowns were rapidly finished.

Down by the tea-house the colored coachman sawed and pounded and planed under Malcolm's occasional direction. He was building a barge like the one described in Tennyson's poem of the Lily Maid of Astolat. From time to time, Lloyd, who was to personate Elaine, was called to stretch herself out on the black bier in the centre, to see if it was long enough or high enough or wide enough, before the final nails were driven into place.

Malcolm, with a pole in his hand, posed as the old dumb servitor who was to row her up the river. It all looked unpromising enough in the broad daylight; the boat with its high stiff prow made of dry goods boxes and covered with black calico, and Lloyd stretched out on the bier in a modern shirtwaist suit with side-combs in her hair. She giggled as she meekly crossed her hands on her breast, with a piece of newspaper folded in one to represent the letter, and a bunch of lilac leaves in the other, which later was to clasp the lily. From under the long eyelashes lying on her cheeks, she smiled mischievously at Malcolm, who was vainly trying to put a decrepit bend into his athletic young back, as he bent over the pole in the attitude of an old, old man.

"Yes, it does look silly now," admitted Miss Allison in answer to his protest that he felt like a fool. "But wait till you get on the long white beard and wig I have for you, and the black robe. You'll look like Methuselah. And Lloyd will be covered with a cloth of gold, and her hair will be rippling down all over her shoulders like gold, too. And we've a real lily for the occasion, a long stalk of them. Oh, this tableau is to be the gem of the collection."

"But half the people here won't understand it," said Malcolm.

"Yes, they will, for we're to have readings behind the scenes in explanation of each one. We've engaged an amateur elocutionist for the occasion. I'll show you just the part she'll read for this scene, so you'll know how long you have to pose to-night. It begins with those lines, 'And the dead, oared by the dumb, went upward with the flood. In her right hand the lily, in her left the letter.' Where did I put that volume of Tennyson?"

"Here it is," answered Mary Ware, unexpectedly, springing up from her seat on the grass to hand her the volume. She had been watching the rehearsal with wide-eyed interest. Deep down in her romance-loving little soul had long been the desire to see Sir Feal the Faithful face to face, and hear him address the Princess. The play of the "Rescue of the Princess Winsome" had become a real thing to her, that she felt that it must have happened; that Malcolm really was Lloyd's true knight, and that when they were alone together they talked like the people in books. She was disappointed when the rehearsal was over because the conversation she had imagined did not take place.

The coachman's carpenter-work was not of the steadiest, and Lloyd lay laughing on the shaky bier because she could not rise without fear of upsetting it.

"Help me up, you ancient mariner," she ordered, and when Malcolm, instead of springing forward in courtly fashion to her assistance as Sir Feal should have done, playfully held out his pole for her to pull herself up by, Mary felt that something was wrong. A playful manner was not seemly on the part of a Sir Feal. It would have been natural enough for Phil or Rob to do teasing things, but she resented it when there seemed a lack of deference on Malcolm's part toward the Princess.

After they had gone back to the porch, Mary sat on the grass a long time, reading the part of the poem relating to the tableau. She and Holland had committed to memory several pages of the "Idylls of the King," and had often run races repeating them, to see which could finish first. Now Mary found that she still remembered the entire page that Miss Allison had read. She closed the book, and repeated it to herself.

"So that day there was dole in Astolat.

. . . . . . . . .

Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead, Oared by the dumb, went upward with the flood— In her right hand the lily, in her left The letter—all her bright hair streaming down— And all the coverlid was cloth of gold— Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white. All but her face, and that clear-featured face Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead, But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled."

That was as far as Mary got with her whispered declamation, for two white-capped maids came out and began spreading small tables under the beech-tree where she sat. She opened the book and began reading, because she did not know what else to do. While she had been watching Lloyd in the boat, Elise had been summoned to the house to try on the dress she was to wear in the tableau of the gipsy fortune-teller. The people on the porch had divided into little groups which she did not feel free to join. She was afraid they would think she was intruding. Even her own sister seemed out of her reach, for she and Lieutenant Logan had taken their share of paper roses over to a rustic seat near the croquet grounds and were talking more busily than they were fashioning tissue flowers.

Mary was unselfishly glad that Joyce was having attention like the other girls and that she had been chosen for one of the Greek maidens in the tableau of June. And she wasn't really jealous of Elise because she was to be tambourine girl in the gipsy scene, but she did wish, with a little fluttering sigh, that she could have had some small part in it all. It was hard to be the only plain one in the midst of so many pretty girls; so plain that nobody even thought of suggesting her for one of the characters.

"I know very well," she said to herself, "that a Lily Maid of Astolat with freckles would be ridiculous, and I'm not slim and graceful enough to be a tambourine girl, but it would be so nice to have some part in it. It would be such a comfortable feeling to know that you're pretty enough always to be counted in."

Her musings were interrupted by the descent of the party upon the picnic tables, and she looked up to see Elise beckoning her to a seat. To her delight it was at the table opposite the one where Lloyd and Phil, Anna Moore and Keith were seated. Malcolm was just across from them, with Miss Bonham on one side and Betty and Lieutenant Stanley on the other. Mary looked around inquiringly for her sister. She was with Rob now, and Lieutenant Logan was placing chairs for Allison and himself on the other side of the tree. Mr. Shelby and the hateful Miss Bernice Howe were over there, too, Mary noted, glad that they were at a distance.

Malcolm was still in a teasing mood, it seemed, for as Lloyd helped herself in picnic fashion from a plate of fried chicken, he said, laughing, "Look at Elaine now. Tennyson wouldn't know his Lily Maid if he saw her in this way." He struck an attitude, declaiming dramatically, "In her right hand the wish-bone, in her left the olive."

"That's all right," answered Lloyd, tossing the olive stone out on the grass, and helping herself to a beaten biscuit. "I always did think that Elaine was a dreadful goose to go floating down the rivah to a man who didn't care two straws about her. She'd much bettah have held on to a wish-bone and an olive and stayed up in her high towah with her fathah and brothahs who appreciated her. She would have had a bettah time and he would have had lots moah respect for her."

"Oh, I don't think so," cooed Miss Bonham, with a coquettish side glance at Phil. "That always seemed such a beautifully romantic situation to me. Doesn't it appeal to you, Mr. Tremont?"

Mary listened for Phil's answer with grave attention, for she, too, considered it a touching situation, and more than once had pictured, in pleasing day-dream, herself as Elaine, floating down a stream in that poetic fashion.

"Well, no, Miss Bonham," said Phil, laughingly. "I'm free to confess that if I had been Sir Lancelot, I'd have liked her a great deal better if she had been a cheerful sort of body, and had stayed alive. Then if she had come rowing up in a nice trig little craft, instead of that spooky old funeral barge, and had offered me a wish-bone and an olive, I'd have thought them twice as fetching as a lily and that doleful letter. I'd have joined her picnic in a jiffy, and probably had such a jolly time that the poem would have ended with wedding bells in the high tower instead of a funeral dirge in the palace.

"She wasn't game," he continued, smiling across at Mary, who was listening with absorbing attention. "Now if she had only lived up to the Vicar of Wakefield's motto—instead of mooning over Lancelot's old shield, and embroidering things for it, and acting as if it were something too precious for ordinary mortals to touch—if she'd batted it into the corner, or made mud pies on it, to show that she was inflexible, fortune would have changed in her favor. Sir Lancelot would have had some respect for her common sense."

Mary, who felt that the remark was addressed to her, crimsoned painfully. Rob took up the question, and his opinion was the same as Phil's and Malcolm's. Long after the conversation passed to other topics, Mary puzzled over the fact that the three knightliest-looking men she knew, the three who, she supposed, would make ideal lovers, had laughed at one of the most romantic situations in all poesy, and had agreed that Elaine was silly and sentimental. Maybe, she thought with burning cheeks, maybe they would think she was just as bad if they knew how she had admired Elaine and imagined herself in her place, and actually cried over the poor maiden who loved so fondly and so truly that she could die of a broken heart.

When she reflected that Lloyd, too, had agreed with them, she began to think that her own ideals might need reconstructing. She was glad that Phil's smile had seemed to say that he took it for granted that she would have been inflexible to the extent of making mud pies on Lancelot's shield. Unconsciously her reconstruction began then and there, for although the seeds sown by the laughing discussion at the picnic table lay dormant in her memory many years, they blossomed into a saving common sense at last, that enabled her to see the humorous side of the most sentimental situation, and gave her wisdom to meet it as it deserved.

The outdoor tableaux that night proved to be one of the most successful entertainments ever given in the Valley. A heavy wire, stretched from one beech-tree to another, held the curtains that hid the impromptu stage. The vine-covered tea-house and a dense clump of shrubbery formed the background. Rows of Japanese lanterns strung from the gate to the house, and from pillar to pillar of the wide porches, gave a festive appearance to the place, but they were not really needed. The full moon flooded the lawn with a silvery radiance, and as the curtains parted each time, a flash of red lights illuminated the tableaux.

It was like a glimpse of fairy-land to Mary, and she had the double enjoyment of watching the arrangement of each group behind the scenes, and then hurrying back with Elise to their chairs in the front row, just as Ranald gave the signal to burn the red lights.

There was the usual confusion in the dressing-room, the tea-house having been taken for that purpose. There was more than usual in some instances, for while the fete had been planned for some time, the tableaux were an afterthought, and many details had been overlooked. Still, with slight delays, they moved along toward a successful finish.

Group by group posed for its particular picture and returned to seats in the audience to enjoy the remainder of the performance. At last only three people were left in the tea-house, and Miss Allison sent Keith, Rob, Phil, and Lieutenant Logan before the curtain, with instructions to sing one of the longest songs they knew and two encores, while Gibbs repaired the prow of the funeral barge. Some one had used it for a step-ladder, and had broken it.

Mary, waiting in the audience till the quartette had finished its first song, did not appear on the scene behind the curtain until Malcolm was dressed in his black robe and long white beard and wig, and Lloyd was laid out on the black bier.

"Stay just as you are," whispered Miss Allison. "It's perfect. I'm going out into the audience to enjoy the effect as the curtain rises."

As she passed Miss Casey, the elocutionist, she felt some one catch her sleeve. "I've left that copy of Tennyson at the house," she gasped. "What shall I do?"

"I'll run and get it," volunteered Elise in a whisper, and promptly started off. Mary, standing back in the shadow of a tall lilac bush, clasped her hands in silent admiration of the picture. It was wonderful how the moonlight transformed everything. Here was the living, breathing poem itself before her. She forgot it was Lloyd and Malcolm posing in makeshift costumes on a calico-covered dry goods box. It seemed the barge itself, draped all in blackest samite, going upward with the flood, that day that there was dole in Astolat. While she gazed like one in a dream, Lloyd half-opened her eyes, to peep at the old boatman.

"I wish they'd hurry," she said, in a low tone. "I never felt so foolish in my whole life."

"And never looked more beautiful," Malcolm answered, trying to get another glimpse of her without changing his pose.

"Sh," she whispered back, saucily. "You forget that you are dumb. You mustn't say a word."

"I will," he answered, in a loud whisper. "For even if I were really dumb I think I should find my voice to tell you that with your hair rippling down on that cloth of gold in the moonlight, and all in white, with that lily in your hand, you look like an angel, and I'm in the seventh heaven to be here with you in this boat."

"And with you in that white hair and beard I feel as if it were Fathah Time paying me compliments," said Lloyd, her cheeks dimpling with amusement. "Hush! It's time for me to look dead," she warned, as the applause followed the last encore. "Don't say anything to make me laugh. I'm trying to look as if I had died of a broken heart."

Elise darted back just as the prompter's bell rang, and Mary, turning to follow her to their seats in the audience, saw Miss Casey tragically throw up her hands, with a horrified exclamation. It was not the copy of Tennyson Elise had brought her. In her haste she had snatched up a volume of essays bound in the same blue and gold.

"Go on!" whispered Malcolm, sternly. "Say something. At least go out and explain the tableau in your own words. There are lots of people who won't know what we are aiming at."

Miss Casey only wrung her hands. "Oh, I can't! I can't!" she answered, hoarsely. "I couldn't think of a word before all those people!" As the curtain drew slowly apart, she covered her face with her hands and sank back out of sight in the shrubbery.

The curtain-shifter had answered the signal of the prompter's bell, which at Miss Allison's direction was to be rung immediately after the last applause. Neither knew of the dilemma.

A long-drawn "O-o-oh" greeted the beautiful tableau, and then there was a silence that made Miss Allison rise half-way in her seat, to see what had become of the interpreter. Then she sank back again, for a clear, strong voice, not Miss Casey's, took up the story.

"And that day there was dole in Astolat. Then rose the dumb old servitor, and the dead, Oared by the dumb, went upward with the flood."



She did not know who had sprung to the rescue, but Joyce, who recognized Mary's voice, felt a thrill of pride that she was doing it so well. It was better than Miss Casey's rendering, for it was without any professional frills and affectations; just the simple story told in the simplest way by one who felt to the fullest the beauty of the picture and the music of the poem.

The red lights flared up, and again the exclamation of pleasure swept through the audience, for Lloyd, lying on the black bier with her hair rippling down and the lily in her hand, might indeed have been the dead Elaine, so ethereal and fair she seemed in that soft glow. Three times the curtains were parted, and even then the enthusiastic guests kept applauding.

There was a rush from the seats, and half a dozen admiring friends pushed between the curtains to offer congratulations. But before they reached her, Lloyd had rolled off her bier to catch Mary in an impulsive hug, crying, "You were a perfect darling to save the day that way! Wasn't she, Malcolm? It was wondahful that you happened to know it!"

The next moment she had turned to Judge Moore and Alex Shelby and the ladies who were with them, to explain how Mary had had the presence of mind and the ability to throw herself into Miss Casey's place on the spur of the moment, and turn a failure into a brilliant success. The congratulations and compliments which she heard on every side were very sweet to Mary's ears, and when Phil came up a little later to tell her that she was a brick and the heroine of the evening, she laughed happily.

"Where is the fair Elaine?" he asked next. "I see her boat is empty. Can you tell me where she has drifted?"

"No," answered Mary, so eager to be of service that she was ready to tell all she knew. "She was here with Sir Feal till just a moment ago."

"Sir Feal!" echoed Phil, in amazement.

"Oh, I forgot that you don't know the Princess play. I meant Mister Malcolm. While so many people were in here congratulating us and shaking hands, I heard him say something to her in an undertone, and then he sang sort of under his breath, you know, so that nobody else but me heard him, that verse from the play:

"'Go bid the Princess in the tower Forget all thought of sorrow. Her true love will return to her With joy on some glad morrow.'

"Then he bent over her and said still lower, 'By my calendar it's the glad morrow now, Princess.'

"He went on just like he was in the play, you know. I suppose they have rehearsed it so much that it is sort of second nature for them to talk in that old-time way, like kings and queens used to do."

"Maybe," answered Phil. "Then what did she say?" he demanded, frowning.

"I don't know. She walked off toward the house with him, and that's the last I saw of them. Why, what's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing!" he replied, with a shrug of his shoulders. "Nothing's the matter, little Vicar. Let us keep inflexible, and fortune will at last change in our favor."

"Now whatever did he mean by that!" exclaimed Mary, as she watched him walk away. It puzzled her all the rest of the evening that he should have met her question with the family motto.



CHAPTER IX.

"SOMETHING BLUE"

A rainy day followed the lawn fete, such a steady pour that little rivers ran down the window-panes, and the porches had to be abandoned. But nobody lamented the fact that they were driven indoors. Rob and Joyce began a game of chess in the library. Lloyd and Phil turned over the music in the cabinet until they found a pile of duets which they both knew, and began to try them, first to the accompaniment of the piano, then the harp.

Mary, sitting in the hall where she could see both the chess-players and the singers, waited in a state of bliss to be summoned to the sewing-room. Only that morning it had been discovered that there was enough pink chiffon left, after the bridesmaids' gowns were completed, to make her a dress, and the seamstress was at work upon it now. So it was a gay, rose-colored world to Mary this morning, despite the leaden skies and pouring rain outside. Not only was she to have a dress, the material for which had actually been brought from Paris, but she was to have little pink satin slippers like the bridesmaids, and she was to have a proud place in the wedding itself. When the bridal party came down the stairs, it was to be her privilege to swing wide the gate of roses for them to pass through.

Joyce had designed the gate. It was to be a double one, swung in the arch between the hall and the drawing-room, and it would take hundreds of roses to make it, the florist said.

In Mary's opinion the office of gate-opener was more to be desired than that of bridesmaid. As she sat listening to the music, curled up in a big hall chair like a contented kitten, she decided that there was nobody in all the world with whom she would change places. There had been times when she would have exchanged gladly with Joyce, thinking of the artist career ahead of her, or with Betty, who was sure to be a famous author some day, or with Lloyd, who seemed to have everything that heart could wish, or with Eugenia with all her lovely presents and trousseau and the new home on the Hudson waiting for her. But just now she was so happy that she wouldn't even have stepped into a fairy-tale.

Presently, through the dripping window-panes, she saw Alec plodding up the avenue under an umbrella, his pockets bulging with mail packages, papers, and letters. Betty, at her window up-stairs, saw him also, and came running down the steps, followed by Eugenia. The old Colonel, hearing the call, "The mail's here," opened the door of his den, and joined the group in the hall where Betty proceeded to sort out the letters. A registered package from Stuart was the first thing that Eugenia tore open, and the others looked up from their letters at her pleased exclamation:

"Oh, it's the charms for the bride's cake!"

"Ornaments for the top?" asked Rob, as she lifted the layer of jeweller's cotton and disclosed a small gold thimble, and a narrow wedding-ring.

"No! Who ever heard of such a thing!" she laughed. "Haven't you heard of the traditional charms that must be baked in a bride's cake? It is a token of the fate one may expect who finds it in his slice of cake. Eliot taught me the old rhyme:

"'Four tokens must the bridescake hold: A silver shilling and a ring of gold, A crystal charm good luck to symbol, And for the spinster's hand a thimble.'

"Eliot firmly believes that the tokens are a prophecy, for years ago, at her cousin's wedding in England, she got the spinster's thimble. The girl who found the ring was married within the year, and the one who found the shilling shortly came into an inheritance. True, it didn't amount to much,—about five pounds,—but the coincidence firmly convinced Eliot of the truth of the superstition. In this country people usually take a dime instead of a shilling, but I told Stuart that I wanted to follow the custom strictly to the letter. And look what a dear he is! Here is a bona fide English shilling, that he took the trouble to get for me."

Phil took up the bit of silver she had placed beside the thimble and the ring, and looked it over critically. "Well, I'll declare!" he exclaimed. "That was Aunt Patricia's old shilling! I'd swear to it. See the way the hole is punched, just between those two ugly old heads? And I remember the dent just below the date. Looks as if some one had tried to bite it. Aunt Patricia used to keep it in her treasure-box with her gold beads and other keepsakes."

The old Colonel, who had once had a fad for collecting coins, and owned a large assortment, held out his hand for it. Adjusting his glasses, he examined it carefully. "Ah! Most interesting," he observed. "Coined in the reign of 'Bloody Mary,' and bearing the heads of Queen Mary and King Philip. You remember this shilling is mentioned in Butler's 'Hudibras:'

"'Still amorous and fond and billing, Like Philip and Mary on a shilling.'

"You couldn't have a more appropriate token for your cake, my dear," he said to Eugenia with a smile. Then he laid it on the table, and taking up his papers, passed back into his den.

"That's the first time I ever heard my name in a poem," said Phil. "By rights I ought to draw that shilling in my share of cake. If I do I shall take it as a sign that history is going to repeat itself, and shall look around for a ladye-love named Mary. Now I know a dozen songs with that name, and such things always come in handy when 'a frog he would a-wooing go,' There's 'My Highland Mary' and 'Mary of Argyle,' and 'Mistress Mary, quite contrary,' and 'Mary, call the cattle home, across the sands of Dee!'"

As he rattled thoughtlessly on, nothing was farther from his thoughts than the self-conscious little Mary just behind him. Nobody saw her face grow red, however, for Lloyd's exclamation over the last token made every one crowd around her to see.

It was a small heart-shaped charm of crystal, probably intended for a watch-fob. There was a four-leaf clover, somehow mysteriously imbedded in the centre.

"That ought to be doubly lucky," said Eugenia. "Oh, what a dear Stuart was to take so much trouble to get the very nicest things. They couldn't be more suitable."

"Eugenia," asked Betty, "have you thought of that other rhyme that brides always consider? You know you should wear

"'Something old, something new, Something borrowed, something blue.'"

"Yes, Eliot insisted on that, too. The whole outfit will, itself, be something new, the lace that was on my mother's wedding-gown will be the something old. I thought I'd borrow a hairpin apiece from you girls, and I haven't decided yet about the something blue."

"No," objected Lloyd. "The borrowed articles ought to be something really valuable. Let me lend you my little pearl clasps to fasten your veil, and then for the something blue, there is your turquoise butterfly. You can slip it on somewhere, undah the folds of lace."

"What a lot of fol-de-rol there is about a wedding," said Rob. "As if it made a particle of difference whether you wear pink or green! Why must it be blue?"

There was an indignant protest from all the girls, and Rob made his escape to the library, calling to Joyce to come and finish the game of chess.

That evening, Mary, sitting on the floor of the library in front of the Poets' Corner, took down volume after volume to scan its index. She was looking for the songs Phil had mentioned, which contained her name. At the same time she also kept watch for the name of Philip. She remembered she had read some lines one time about "Philip my King."

As she pored over the poems in the dim light, for only the shaded lamp on the central table was burning, she heard steps on the porch outside. The rain had stopped early in the afternoon, and the porches had dried so that the hammocks and chairs could be put out again. Now voices sounded just outside the window where she sat, and the creaking of a screw in the post told that some one was sitting in the hammock. Evidently it was Lloyd, for Phil's voice sounded nearer the window. He had seated himself in the armchair that always stood in that niche, and was tuning a guitar. As soon as it was keyed up to his satisfaction, he began thrumming on it, a sort of running accompaniment to their conversation.

It did not occur to Mary that she was eavesdropping, for they were talking of impersonal things, just the trifles of the hour; and she caught only a word now and then as she scanned the story of Enoch Arden. The name Philip, in it, had arrested her attention.

"I think the maid of honor ought to wear something blue as well as the bride," remarked Phil.

"Why?" asked Lloyd.

There was such a long pause that Mary looked up, wondering why he did not answer.

"Why?" asked Lloyd again.

Phil thrummed on a moment longer, and then began playing in a soft minor key, and his answer, when it finally came, seemed at first to have no connection with what he had been talking about.

"Do you remember when we were in Arizona, the picnic we had at Hole-in-the-rock, and the story that that old Norwegian told about Alaka, the gambling god, who lost his string of precious turquoises and even his eyes?"

"Yes."

Mary looked up from her book, listening alertly. The mystery of years was about to be explained.

"Well, do you remember a conversation you had with Joyce about it afterward, in which you called the turquoise the 'friendship stone,' because it was true blue? And you said it was a pity that some people you knew, not a thousand miles away, couldn't go to the School of the Bees, and learn that line from Watts about Satan finding mischief for idle hands to do. And Joyce said yes, it was too bad for a fine fellow to get into trouble just because he was a drone, and had no ambition to make anything of himself; that if Alaka had gone to the School of the Bees he wouldn't have lost his eyes. And then you said that if somebody kept on he would at least lose his turquoises. Do you remember all that?"

The screw in the post stopped creaking as Lloyd sat straight up in the hammock to exclaim in astonishment: "Yes, I remembah, but how undah the sun, Phil Tremont, do you happen to know anything about that convahsation? You were not there."

"No, but little Mary Ware was. She didn't have the faintest idea that you meant me, and that Sunday morning when I called at the Wigwam for the last time to make my apologies and farewells, and you were not there, she told me all about it like the blessed little chatterbox that she was. Then, when I saw plainly that I had forfeited my right to your friendship, I did not wait to say good-by, just left a message for you with Mary. I knew she would attempt to deliver it, but I have wondered many times since if she gave it in the words I told her. Of course I couldn't expect you to remember the exact words after all this time."

"But it happens that I do," answered Lloyd. "She said, 'Alaka has lost his precious turquoises, but he will win them back again some day.'"

"Did you understand what I meant, Lloyd?"

"Well, I—I guessed at yoah meaning."

"Mary unwittingly did me a good turn that morning. She was an angel unawares, for she showed me myself as you saw me, a drone in the hive, with no ambition, and the gambling fever in my veins making a fool of me. I went away vowing I would win back your respect and make myself worthy of your friendship, and I can say honestly that I have kept that vow. Soon after, while I was out on that first surveying trip I came across some unset stones for a mere song. This little turquoise was among them." He took the tiny stone from his pocket and held it out on his palm, so that the light streaming out from the library fell across it.

"I have carried it ever since. Many a time it has reminded me of you and your good opinion I was trying to win back. I've had lots of temptations to buck against, and there have been times when they almost downed me, but I say it in all humility, Lloyd, this little bit of turquoise kept me 'true blue,' and I've lived straight enough to ask you to take it now, in token that you do think me worthy of your friendship. When I heard Eugenia talking about wearing something blue at the wedding, I had a fancy that it would be an appropriate thing for the maid of honor to do, too."

Lloyd took the little stone he offered, and held it up to the light.

"It certainly is true blue," she said, with a smile, "and I'm suah you are too, now. I didn't need this to tell me how well you've been doing since you left Arizona. We've heard a great deal about yoah successes from Cousin Carl."

"Then let me have it set in a ring for you," he added. "There will be plenty of time before the wedding."

"No," she answered, hastily. "I couldn't do that. Papa Jack wouldn't like it. He wouldn't allow me to accept anything from a man in the way of jewelry, you know. I couldn't take it as a ring. Now just this little unset stone"—she hesitated. "Just this bit of a turquoise that you say cost only a trifle, I'm suah he wouldn't mind that. I'll tell him it's just my friendship stone."

"What a particular little maid of honor you are!" he exclaimed. "How many girls of seventeen do you know who would take the trouble to go to their fathers with a trifle like that, and make a careful explanation about it? Besides, you can't tell him that it is only a friendship stone. I want it to mean more than that to you, Lloyd. I want it to stand for a great deal more between us. Don't you see how I care—how I must have cared all this time, to let the thought of you make such a difference in my life?"

There was no mistaking the deep tenderness of his voice or the earnestness of his question. Lloyd felt the blood surge up in her face and her heart throbbed so fast she could hear it beat. But she hastily thrust back the proffered turquoise, saying, in confusion:

"Then I can't wear it! Take it back, please; I promised Papa Jack—"

"Promised him what?" asked Phil, as she hesitated.

"Well, it's rathah hard to explain," she began in much confusion, "unless you knew the story of 'The Three Weavahs.' Then you'd undahstand."

"But I don't know it, and I'd rather like an explanation of some kind. I think you'll have to make it clear to me why you can't accept it, and what it was you promised your father."

"Oh, I can't tell it to make it sound like anything," she began, desperately. "It was like this. No, I can't tell it. Come in the house, and I'll get the book and let you read it for yoahself!"

"No, I'd rather hear the reason from your own lips. Besides, some one would interrupt us in there, and I want to understand where I'm 'at' before that happens."

"Well," she began again, "it is a story Mrs. Walton told us once when our Shadow Club was in disgrace, because one of the girls eloped, and we were all in such trouble about it that we vowed we'd be old maids. Afterward it was the cause of our forming another club that we called the 'Ordah of Hildegarde.' I'll give you a sawt of an outline now, if you'll promise to read the entiah thing aftahward."

"I'll promise," agreed Phil.

"Then, this is it. Once there were three maidens, of whom it was written in the stahs that each was to wed a prince, provided she could weave a mantle that should fit his royal shouldahs as the falcon's feathahs fit the falcon. Each had a mirror beside her loom like the Lady of Shalott's in which the shadows of the world appeahed.

"One maiden wove in secret, and falling in love with a page who daily passed her mirror, imagined him to be a prince, and wove her web to fit his unworthy shouldahs. Of co'se when the real prince came it was too small, and so she missed the happiness that was written for her in the stahs.

"The second squandahed her warp of gold first on one, then anothah, weaving mantles for any one who happened to take her fancy—a shepherd boy and a troubador, a student and a knight. When her prince rode by she had nothing left to offah him, so she missed her life's happiness.

"But the third had a deah old fathah like Papa Jack, and he gave her a silvah yahdstick on which was marked the inches and ells that a true prince ought to be. And he warned her like this:

"'Many youths will come to thee, each begging, "Give me the royal mantle, Hildegarde. I am the prince the stahs have destined for thee." And with honeyed words he'll show thee how the mantle in the loom is just the length to fit his shouldahs. But let him not persuade thee to cut it loose and give it to him as thy young fingahs will be fain to do. Weave on anothah yeah and yet anothah, till thou, a woman grown, can measuah out a perfect web, moah ample than these stripling youths could carry, but which will fit thy prince in faultlessness, as the falcon's feathahs fit the falcon.'

"Then Hildegarde took the silvah yahdstick and said, 'You may trust me, fathah. I will not cut the golden warp from out the loom, until I, a woman grown, have woven such a web as thou thyself shalt say is worthy of a prince's wearing.' (That's what I promised Papa Jack.)

"Of co'se it turned out, that one day with her fathah's blessing light upon her, she rode away beside the prince, and evah aftah all her life was crowned with happiness, as it had been written for her in the stahs."

There was a long pause when she finished, so long that the silence began to grow painful. Then Phil said, slowly:

"I understand now. Would you mind telling me what the measure was your father gave you that your prince must be?"

"There were three notches. He must be clean and honahable and strong."

There was another long pause before Phil said, "Well, I wouldn't be measuring up to that second notch if I asked you to break your promise to your father, and you wouldn't do it even if I did. So there's nothing more for me to say at present. But I'll ask this much. You'll keep the turquoise if we count it merely a friendship stone, won't you?"

"Yes, I'll be glad to do that. And I'll weah it at the wedding if you want me to, as my bit of something blue. I'll slip it down into my glove."

"Thank you," he answered, then added, after a pause: "And I suppose there's another thing. That yardstick keeps all the other fellows at a distance, too. That's something to be cheerful over. But you mark my words—I'm doing a bit of prophesying now—when your real prince comes you'll know him by this: he'll come singing this song. Listen."

Picking up his guitar again, he struck one full deep chord and began singing softly the "Bedouin Love-song," "From the desert I come to thee." The refrain floated tremulously through the library window.