"I guess," said Jake. "But she was afraid she might wetten her feet out, so she said she guessed she hadn't ought to went. Rosie wouldn't leave her go, for all; she wanted to come along bad, but she said she'd have to let the meetin' you folks to me."

"And she couldn't have 'let' it to a better man, Jake," said Bob gravely.

The drive up to the Ark could not have been more beautiful if Crestville had felt precisely as the young Scollards felt, and had wanted to show Robert Gaston the country under its most attractive aspect. A light, but wet snow which had not reached New York, had fallen here on the preceding day. It was the sort of snow that rests on the bare tree branches and clothes them in white. The entire landscape was a study in black and white, trees all white on a line of black limb, serried ranks of black woods touched with white in the distance, white fields, black rocks, all against a gray sky that had the effect of nearness and of palpable softness.

"Dear me, it is a lovely country!" Robert said, looking about him delightedly. "What a glorious view! No wonder Gretta is glad to get back!"

"It was the dreariest, most desolate place to us when we came here last April that one could imagine. The house dilapidated, unfurnished, or furnished with rickety fragments, and mother so ill, and our future so unsmiling! Aunt Keren was everything to us; she literally saved mother's life, we think, but indeed it was discouraging enough the night we drove this road for the first time," said Margery. "There is our Ark!"

Mahlon let Don Dolor turn in at the gate. The big sled was not far behind, speed being nearly equal up hill between tired horses and a fresh one.

Miss Keren risked taking cold, standing on the upper step to beam her welcome. Beside her stood Rosie Gruber, as tall and gaunt as ever, but now her gauntness had the effect of an original design, and when the Ark had first known her Rosie had given the impression of being gaunt from over-work and under-feeding.

She caught Polly and Penny into her arms, both at once, like a capacious threshing machine grasping at peculiarly succulent little grains.

"Well, my days, children, I didn't know you'd have room enough in New York to grow like you have! I guess country air shown you how! You run in and see once what Rosie's fixed for dinner! Margery, you dear girl, leave me hug you!" Rosie's welcome forestalled Miss Keren's in these cases, but Miss Keren was welcoming Robert, whom she presented to Rosie, and to whom Rosie extended a hard and bony hand, with a keen glance that appraised the young man accurately.

"Glad you come," she said. "It hain't so cold where you live, but you wouldn't feel it if you stayed up to git use to it. My days, there's the team, and Bob, and Ralph—and Happie yet!"

Rosie's tone expressed her sense of Happie as a climax. The second Scollard girl had always been to her the perfection of girlhood.

In a moment they were all hugging and shaking hands with Rosie, while Robert Gaston looked on with amused and admiring eyes, fully appreciating the relations between this free-born American citizen and the family she looked after.

Miss Keren submitted to the arm Happie wound around her, as they all bundled into the small entry and into the library. On the hearth Rosie had built a generous fire of logs, odorous cherry logs, which filled the room with faint fragrance and emphatic warmth. Aunt Keren looked better, Happie thought. And how pretty this room was which they had found so forlorn on its first sight! The low ceiling, the wide planks in the flooring, the comfortable chairs, the table, book-strewn, the shelves lined with books of all sizes and colors, the soft short curtains, the good pictures, the firelight throwing shadows and high lights though it was noon, for the day was gray—how pretty and individual it all was.

"Now get your things off while I dish up, and then you kin all set up and eat a while," said Rosie, in the familiar phrase which had amused the family so much on their first acquaintance with it.

"Let us help you, Gretta and I!" cried Happie throwing off her hat and coat. "We always did."

Dinner was served quickly, generously, and though Rosie, who waited on the table, joined in the conversation and asked eager questions, it was obviously not from disrespect, but rather from a mutual respect that did away with inequalities. Margery—and for that matter the two Keren-happuchs—watched Robert to see how he took this Arcadian simplicity. They felt, justly enough, that it tested his intelligence and the genuineness of his breeding.

His eyes were full of humorous kindness, he was eating with boyish relish the country viands, and he smiled at Rosie's queer ways with a smile as friendly as it was amused.

"Well, he'll do!" thought Miss Keren.

"I knew he'd look like that! He never fails one," thought Margery.

And Happie nodded approvingly to Gretta as she signaled her admiration of Robert's appetite for schmier-kase and apple butter.

"We have a long afternoon," said Miss Keren when dinner was over. "All of my guests know the place rather better than their hostess—except Mr. Gaston. What do you propose for your own entertainment?"

"We thought we would go skating, Aunt Keren," said Bob. "We four boys—if Mr. Gaston permits our counting him in—and Margery, Happie,—all the girls, except the kiddies."

"I am going to stay in the house all the afternoon with Aunt Keren," announced Happie.

"I am going to take Polly and Penny coasting; I promised it a week ago," said Gretta.

"Laura and Margery, will you desert us?" asked Bob.

"Let's all go coasting!" cried Ralph. "Let's borrow sleds somewhere and coast. It's more fun than skating—we'll skate in the morning."

"Much more fun!" cried Robert Gaston.

"And Happie, I won't allow you to stay here with me," said Aunt Keren decidedly.

"If it's coasting I couldn't, dear Auntie Keren. I haven't coasted since I was young," cried Happie.

"How can you remember it then?" inquired Ralph.

CHAPTER XVI
HAPPIE GRANTS AMNESTY

All night long the wind blew furiously. As it came sweeping down from the higher mountain points there was nothing to allay its force accumulating down the stretch to Crestville. Such small objects as presumptuously stood in its way—farmhouses and red barns—it buffeted, chastising them soundly for attempting to stay it, and sweeping on down to the Jersey plains which were to calm its wrath.

The old Ark shook almost as though it had been a veritable ark out on stormy waters. Blinds rattled, and even the beds trembled, but "the Archaics" slept through the tumult. Coasting is an excellent sedative, especially when followed by a hearty supper and an evening before a blazing log fire.

"It's rather like automobiling to spend the night in your front bedroom, Miss Bradbury," said Robert Gaston at breakfast.

"Funny you thought of that!" cried Happie. "Gretta said last night we ought to have gone to bed in automobile veils and goggles."

"What's the order of exercises this morning—for all day, in fact?" inquired Bob. "The wind has gone down, and I don't know how we could suggest an improvement in the sort of day we've got."

He waved his hand towards the window. The sun was pouring into it, and beyond the window the fields were shining, brilliantly white in the sun rays, blue white in the shadows; yellow stubble, where the grain had been cut, showing in stretches on the upland slopes, black woods and impressionistic purple mountains as a background to the picture.

"And gittin' warmer yet!" chimed in Rosie. "You do what you want to do to-day, though. There's more snow comin'. 'Tain't fur off. It's sure to be here by Monday, if 'tain't here to-morrow."

"We thought we'd go skating, if you boys would come with us," said Laura.

"This morning you are all going for a straw-ride in the bottom of Jake's big blue sled," announced Miss Keren.

"When in doubt play trumps," observed Bob. "That's a lead that takes all our tricks, Aunt Keren. I thought we might put off our skating till Monday morning—we don't go down till nearly two o'clock—and this afternoon return to our innocent childhood's ways. Mahlon says the pond is rough and the skating not much good anyway, because they've been cutting ice from it and it's made it uneven."

"What ways of innocent childhood, Bob?" asked Margery.

"Snow forts," replied Bob promptly. "And snowball assault of them."

"Good for you!" cried Ralph. "That would beat skating to my mind. I never had a chance to fight in a snow fort but once in my life, and then I was too small to stand a chance, even though I had one. We ought to have a rousing scrimmage here. Oh, what's the use of being young in a city, anyway!"

"I suppose Mr. Gaston will command one side, as he's the oldest boy," began Snigs, but Robert said at the same moment: "I'm the oldest boy here, and what's more I've had the advantage of college athletics, football, for muscle training. I'll stand you three fellows, if you'll let me have Gretta and Happie on my side, for they'll be the best fighters among the girls I'm pretty certain, and I think that's fair."

"That's all right. Margery and Laura would be best in the Red Cross department," assented Bob. "So it will be you and the two girls against us three boys, and we'll do you up, Mr. Robert Gaston. You'll want to sing 'Maryland, My Maryland' when we get through with you."

"Cockadoodle do-o-o-o!" commented Happie, gently insinuating that crowing was not always prophetical.

"Now you youngsters go and wrap up in everything you can find, and be ready to start in half an hour. I laid a pile of robes and blankets, old coats, furs, all sorts of things, on the couch and table in the library. Help yourselves, and please don't keep Jake waiting. He is going to take you up around the hotels on the mountains, where you will see glorious views, but you will be as cold as Arctic explorers," said Miss Keren rising.

When the party came out ready for the sleigh ride they were such a funny lot, bundled in knit scarfs, shabby furs, handsome furs, and everything else available, and carrying patchwork quilts and thick comfortables on their arms, that Rosie Gruber laughed at the sight of them, as the Scollards had never seen her laugh before, and Mahlon swung his left arm and leg in delirious unison, laughing in precisely the way he used to cry in his sorrowful time when they first knew him.

"My days, you look like carpet rags come to life and walkin' round!" cried Rosie. "Penny, leave me carry you out, you can't walk, you poor little mamma you. You look just like those Egypt mammas I seen once in some of them books in the room."

It was true that Penny looked mummified in her wrappings, and that her little legs had short play, swaddled like a papoose. But they bundled her into the straw, tucked her and Polly down between their elders, drew up the motley quilts and covered them decently with robes, and were off, drawn by Don Dolor and a young horse from Jake's neighbor, Pete Kuntz.

"How did you manage about your hauling mine props to-day, Jake?" asked Bob from his seat of honor—and exposure—beside the driver.

"Let it," said Jake promptly. "He'll have to git along without me to-day. I had to leave Aaron haul a while still. She'll pay me as much fer driving you all as I git a day haulin', and it leaves my team work yet. I like to be obligin'."

The Scollards laughed, Jake did not see why, but he was used to their laughing when the fun was invisible to him.

"'A wand'ring minstrel I, a thing of shreds and patches,'" sang Robert, drawing his yellow and red quilt, lent by Rosie, around his shoulders. One of Robert's gifts was a very good voice.

This started the choir and the party sang as the sled went briskly up the gradual rise in the road to the mountains where the many large hotels made in themselves, and drew around them, a very different summer life from the indigenous life of the section.

It was intensely cold, but there was no more wind, and the air was so dry that the blood flowed faster and off-set the lowly thermometer. People came out to look as the musical sled spun past, for it carried an amateur choir of unusual ability; and the harmony sounded so beautiful through the frosty air that many a listener wished the horses would loiter before his door.

It was unpleasantly cold coming home. "The wind is right up from the Gap," said Gretta. "There's a storm coming."

"This isn't much fun," remarked Penny, with stifled pathos, from the depths of her eclipse under enveloping skirts, quilts, shawls and robes. "I wish I was home."

"I don't," said Polly stoutly. "I think it's nice to be very uncomfortable when you go out for fun—sometimes, I mean—so you'll know how awful it is when it isn't fun." A shout of laughter greeted this philosophical seeker after experience.

"We'd better sing, 'In the Good Old Summer-time,' and see if we can't mind-cure ourselves into warmth," said Bob with a shiver.

"What's the matter with, 'A Hot Time in the Old Town To-night'?" asked Ralph.

"We'll have that in our forts before night," said Robert.

The sled turned into the Ark driveway an hour before dinner, with its load loudly singing: "Ching-a-ling-a-lu," which was so pretty, with its chromatic effects given in harmony, Margery's sweet voice sustained by Laura as another soprano—for with Robert there Laura was not obliged to sing tenor as she usually did—Happie and Gretta's alto, Ralph and Bob and Snigs humming baritone and bass, and Robert singing fine tenor, that Miss Keren dashed out to hear it as well as to welcome her merry crowd. "You don't know how well that sounded," she cried.

"Don't we!" cried Happie. "Aunt Keren, we have warbled our way up the hillsides and back, and plaudits are echoing still on our track, we think that as singers there's nothing we lack, but, oh, you can't guess how our dinner will smack!"

Happie jumped out over the side of the sled as she uttered this remarkable inspiration, and the companions she thus left sitting among the straw burst into applause that actually made Don Dolor plunge and threaten to get up on his hind legs.

"You ridiculous child!" cried Miss Keren. "Rosie has enough to satisfy you, and it is almost ready, so get yourselves ready, and don't tell me anything about the drive until we are at the table."

Dinner was a rapid, but not a slender meal, that day. The snow forts were as interesting as though the boys were not almost grown up and Robert Gaston had not cast his first presidential vote for President Roosevelt.

Margery and Laura were non-combatants. They were to mold the bullets, which meant that, one on each side, they were to make snowballs for their warriors.

The forts went up quickly, the object being to make them resistant, but not too much so. The boys wanted one or the other of them to fall at the end of the scrimmage. Still, when the walls were up they did pour a few pails of water over them to stiffen them, for there was not much doubt that it would freeze.

It was bitterly cold, but the garrison of the two forts, equal in numbers if not in prowess, marched into them—Robert, with his two amazons, Gretta and Happie; Bob, Ralph and Snigs to oppose them.

The balls flew hot and heavy. Miss Keren had improvised a flag for the front of each fort, and the object of the fighters was to down the opposite flag first of all.

"Where did you learn to throw, Happie?" asked Robert, as Happie sent her snowballs true. "I don't wonder so much at Gretta, but you throw well for a city girl."

"Bob," replied Happie, too out of breath for details.

"I hate to hit 'em," murmured Ralph on the other side, sending a ball just past Happie's ear as she put up her head to do her own throwing.

"You let Happie catch on to your sparing her because she's a girl, and I pity you, Ralph," replied Bob. "She won't stand fooling. If she plays with us, she doesn't want favor. You found that out last summer."

"Well she's got to take 'em soft then," grumbled Ralph. It may have been that his chivalry weakened his strong right arm; for some reason Ralph did not fight with the zest of his adversaries and comrades. It was Gretta who came up and held her place while snowballs whizzed around her, and sent a big, icy ball that carried off the flag and snapped the flagstaff on the fort of her foes.

A cheer and the Harvard yell from Robert was answered by a defiant howl and the "yell of the Ark," which these same young people had compiled during the summer:

"Flag's down! Now for the sortie, girls!" cried Robert, his face flushed with his enthusiastic efforts to carry the opposing fort.

It had been agreed that if either flag fell the combatants from the other fort were to be allowed to rush out and try to carry the adversaries' fort by assault. Robert tore out of his fort, followed closely by Happie and Gretta. The foe was ready to receive them. A storm of snowballs fell on them, but like a well-disciplined legion the three attacking warriors wavered, but did not halt. Two of them—the amazonian wing of the army—bent down and came on somewhat like jackknives, doubled over, but came on, nevertheless, presenting their backs to the foe in a sense that was not cowardice.

If the defending garrison had had ammunition in supply equal to their need they might have held their fort against their foes, at least much longer. But Laura was a languid snowball maker at best, and was very tired of her task, so that one of the boys had to reinforce her while the other two fought, and with the garrison thus handicapped the victory was quick and sure for the besiegers.

Robert had been rolling snowballs as he advanced, and Happie, catching his idea, helped him. With her arms full of ammunition, and Robert's left arm laden, there was no delay between the shots which fell on the devoted heads of the defenders of the fort every time one of them popped up to fight off the assailants.

"Surrender!" ordered Robert.

"With honors?" stipulated Bob.

"Certainly. March out with colors flying, gallant garrison—provided you can find your colors, which my amazonian general knocked to smithereens," returned Robert. Bob and Ralph had provided themselves against defeat. Three combs were the main part of their provision, supplemented by tissue paper—the instruments of a military band. Bob picked up the broken flagstaff with its flag still pendant. Shouldering it, he placed himself at the head of his men, Ralph, Snigs, Laura, the ammunition maker. These three played "Down Went Maginty," in the slowest possible time, with immense expression—it sounded like a dirge.

"We shall proceed to raze your fort, under the terms of the surrender," announced Robert. Strictly speaking there had been no terms stipulated in the surrender, but before the siege began it had been agreed that the defeated fort should be destroyed. "I feel like Marius," Robert added.

"Suppose we take a hand," suggested Bob.

"Take a foot," corrected Ralph, setting the example by kicking a hole in the wall he had just been defending. "The sooner it's over the sooner to eat."

It did not take long to knock down the walls. "Now, this cruel war is over," announced Robert. "What time do we sup to-night?"

"It's really dreadful!" cried Margery. "If I were Aunt Keren I would never have a house party of young people again in winter."

The storm did not set in on Sunday until night. A cloudy, gray morning showed new beauties of a country winter. The air was less cold; it was still and significant, as if the atmosphere hung low with its weather secrets reluctantly concealed. "No matter how they have treated me, I'm going to see Eunice and Reba," announced Gretta. "They never wanted to let me live with them, but they did give me what home I had when I was small, and they are my cousins. It isn't right not to try to do my part."

"They may be civil now that you own the farm and have friends, Gretta. But you'll see there's no use in trying—still, you are right enough to try. I am going to stay with Aunt Keren this morning, no matter what she says, or the others do," said Happie positively.

"The boys are going over to the Shales', partly to see them and partly to bring back nuts which they are going to take to New York to-morrow, because we are going skating in the morning and there won't be time to get them then," said Gretta. "And Mr. Gaston is going to take Don Dolor and the sleigh, and Margery is to show him Eden Valley."

Happie sighed. "He thinks she shows him Eden no matter where she is. I suppose they will take the children? There are two seats," she said.

"Now, Happie! I don't suppose any such thing!" Gretta laughed aloud. "The second seat can be taken out."

"It wouldn't be proper for Margery to drive unchaperoned in town, but I suppose it doesn't matter here," said Happie gloomily.

"There weren't any chaperons in the Garden of Eden, and there won't be one in the Valley of Eden," said Gretta, buttoning her coat, and pulling on her gloves. "Miss Bradbury knows, Happie. Now I'm going down to Eunice's, and I'd just as lief go to a dentist, with a jumping nerve."

Gretta walked away with such stiff resolution that Happie knew she dared not let herself hesitate. When she had gone Happie went in quest of Miss Bradbury. She found her alone before the log fire, Laura being at the piano, the two least girls out in the kitchen with Rosie, the boys gone after their nuts and character study at Jake Shale's, and Margery and Robert departed to find Eden Valley.

Miss Keren was not inclined to talk. She sat looking into the fire, and Happie imagined a gently pensive mood upon her usually abrupt name donor.

That day the noon dinner was to be done away with in favor of a mid-afternoon meal, and a tea served in the library shortly before bedtime.

Gretta came back with slow step, and clouded face.

"Never mind, Gretta dear, I knew you could not make anything of that material," whispered Happie, passing her on the stairs.

Gretta shook her head. "I thought I knew them but I didn't realize what they were when I was seeing them every day," she said.

Happie went off for a solitary walk, to renew alone and under winter conditions her acquaintance with some of her favorite nooks. The brook, especially, she wanted to see, as one can see a brook only by standing on its bank with the greenness of its summer setting replaced by snow and ice pushed high on either side and its waters flowing black in the contrast.

She was gone some time and came back peacefully happy. She stopped at yesterday's fort, and glanced in. There was Robert Gaston groping about the floor of the fort. He looked up, and sprang to his feet as he recognized her.

"Ah, dear little Happie!" he cried, to Happie's amazement. "I had a fountain pen yesterday, which has disappeared. I thought I might have dropped it here. But it doesn't matter. Happie, I have seen Bob since I came in, and he has made me welcome in my new rôle. I wanted to speak to you myself, for I'm afraid you aren't going to live fully up to your nickname. Will you take me for your brother, and love me a wee bit, as Margery's dearest sister should?"

"Already? Now?" gasped Happie, looking up at him with horrified eyes.

"Dear Happie, Margery took me to Eden this morning," said Robert. "Before we came up here—the night of our theatre party—I asked your mother if I might ask Margery to—well, might ask her if some day she would be my wife. Your mother said yes, and now, this morning, Margery has said yes also. I am so happy, little Happie, that there is no way to describe my happiness. I'm afraid it is hard for you to share Margery with me, but will you try to be generous? And the best way to get at it is to be fond of me, if you can. Oh, Happie, don't, my dear!"

For Happie, as the full realization of what had taken place, and that her fears were fulfilled so much sooner than she had expected, and as Robert's caressing voice touched her emotionally, sat down on the snow floor of the fort and burying her face in her hands cried and cried.

"Is it I—no, I'm sure that you don't dislike me, Happie. We were friends at our very first meeting. Don't cry like this, Happie. It is dreadful. And don't sit on that cold snow——"

Robert had endured Happie's tears as long as he could, pacing the fort and looking desperately at her as she cried. To his surprise she interrupted him, sobbing out: "There—isn't anything but—cold snow here to sit on."

He stared at her an instant, and then he laughed with great relief.

"Nothing like a sense of nonsense to tide one over hard places, Happiness! Come, get up then. If there is nothing but cold snow to sit on, then sit on nothing! Happie, you're much too big-hearted a girl to grudge Margery her happiness, and she's happy to-day, as happy as I am! And please God I'll make her happy all her life—our pretty, sweet Margery!"

Happie liked that. She essayed to dry her eyes, and accepted the hand which Robert held out to raise her. "Oh, I won't be silly—if I can help it," she sighed. "I won't be mean and selfish, anyway, whether I can help it or not. It's only that Margery was waiting to be the dearest sister in the world when I was born, and I worship her, and I can't breathe without her. But if she has to marry I'm glad it's you; I'll say that. I meant to live with her always. I planned the dearest little house! If you're going to take her to Baltimore——"

Happie paused, her eyes tragic under the new apprehension.

"I'm not. I am going to enter a New York law office, and you shall never be separated from Margery," promised Robert. "Your hand, little sister, and say, 'Robert, I'll forgive you, and by and by I'll like you—for Margery's sake.'"

Happie's lips still quivered, and her voice quivered still more, but she looked up with a pale smile making a supreme effort to acquit herself as Margery would have wished her to.

She put both hands into her new, almost-brother's, and said, "There isn't anything to forgive, and I like you now for your own sake, Robert."

"You dear little soul!" said Robert very sincerely. And he drew Happie's hand through his arm to take her to the house.

"It was appropriate for you to grant amnesty in the fort, Happie," he said, as he left her at the library door.

CHAPTER XVII
JONES-DEXTER PRIDE

The snow came down by four o'clock, soft, and as thick as if the dull gray sky of the day had been a blanket full of feathers of which some one had suddenly dropped the four corners. It was a snow-storm that began in the middle, not working up to severity, and Miss Keren felt forebodings of unbroken roads and difficult getting to the station on the following day.

In the meantime it was delightful to sit by the gray stone hearth, with the logs burning cheerfully and odorously, young voices chattering and laughing around her, feeling the white silence that wrapped the earth outside while within all was rosy and noisy.

Happie did not contribute greatly to the cheerful sounds. She sat, rather quiet, watching the flames, close to Aunt Keren's side, not sad but thoughtful.

Aunt Keren, glancing at her, thought that her girlish face looked older as well as more serious, pensive too, as if it were a maturing and sobering thing to know that one of the Scollards was actually betrothed.

Margery and Robert, on the other side of the hearth, were merry. Margery's face had a deeper sweetness of expression, the look of one who felt herself consecrated to something noble as well as blissful—which was precisely how one would have expected Margery to feel on the day of her betrothal. Margery was always serious, not the girl to make lightly a solemn promise. Robert had no room for any other feeling but light-hearted rapture. He talked gaily and steadily, till the hymn hour came. Laura went to the piano, and with the others still in their places around the hearth, played for them to sing hymn after hymn while the evening wore away. New logs had twice replaced the first ones, and supper hour struck.

The entire party helped Rosie bring in the steaming chocolate, the foamy schmier-case, the white bread in its big slices, the delicious homemade butter, and the cake, so golden and perfect that Happie's layers of fudge between the yellow were almost intrusive.

"Isn't this great?" Robert demanded of no one in particular, stretching out his legs to the snapping fire, and receiving a large spark on his knee as a reward.

"Look out there! You have to watch that fire a little. I put in some pine sticks to hurry it a while," cried Rosie. "A big spark flew over acrosst to where Dundee was layin' by the door there a coupler weeks ago and he'd have took fire on his tail if I hadn't happened to be in here."

Dundee, whose pleasure in getting his family back had been beautiful to behold, wagged the great plume of a tail in question and hitched himself along nearer to Bob, thrusting his nose into the empty hand on the boy's knee, as if to say: "I eat cake." Bob gave the collie a generous mouthful. It had no effect except to bring Dundee up one short hitch nearer, and Bob pulled his ear.

"We don't want you cremated, you braw, bonny Scotsman you! But neither can I give you all my cake," he said. "I think this is great, brother Robert. We sat around the fire like this before we went away, for we stayed up till December, you know—or didn't Margery write you?"

"It's much nicer to eat supper this way than it is to have three proper meals a day. Everything tastes so especially good," said Margery, frowning at Bob.

"I always liked to eat a piece at night," said Rosie.

"'Eat a piece' means to take a light lunch, in Madison Countyese," Margery explained in a whisper to Robert.

"But Mahlon always wants to set up and eat—thinks he's gittin' more," Rosie continued. "The thinner a body is the more victuals he seems to eat. My days, I often think to myself it's a lucky thing buckwheat cakes is so indigestible. They give a body a chancet to git something done in the forenoon without havin' Mahlon in and out every coupler minutes askin' when a body's goin' to git dinner over."

"I've eaten a great many pieces—of bread, and cake, and jam," announced Snigs.

"We are going to bed early, dear children," said Aunt Keren. "It may be that we shall be obliged to take a morning train. We can't stay here until Tuesday, because of Bob's business, and the tea room, and I am told by Rosie and Gretta that the road to the station may be impassable by to-morrow afternoon if this snow keeps up. Will you all promise to waken early? All waken together, at the same moment, and waken one another?"

"We solemnly swear," said Ralph, in a sepulchral voice. "That's just our kind of a pledge."

"It seems a pity to go to bed," said Happie. "We have had three such pleasant days——"

"That you want to sit up all night?" Miss Keren finished for her, with a hand on the second Keren-happuch's shoulder.

"It does seem a pity to shorten this blessed day," said Robert. "There never comes again the first day in Eden, you know."

He smiled down at Margery, who said: "If we go to sleep we can waken to the second day, and think how glad we shall be to find we had not dreamed to-day!"

"When this little girl's grandmother helped her husband to die, he told her that the last day was the happiest of their happy married life," said Miss Keren.

There was silence for a moment. Robert broke it by rising and saying gravely: "Sing one more hymn, and then good-night! Let's sing the splendid old long metre doxology, the Old Hundredth. I think there's nothing quite like it when you feel no end grateful and not fit to have half you've got."

"Let me play it, for I can't sing," said Miss Keren unexpectedly.

She took Laura's place and played the glorious old choral. The fresh young voices' sang with heart in them, and the harmony rose up the fireplace of the old Ark and floated out from the chimney upon the snow-storm, blanketing the once desolate house with beauty and warmth, symbolical of its interior change.

"Now, good-night, Miss Keren. You ought to have good nights and happy days, for you've made us all happy," said Robert.

"Good-night, children. Remember your promise to waken early!" said Miss Keren. "Happie, come to my room for a while. I want you."

The Archaics fulfilled their promise and aroused early. They wakened to a world in which only the higher objects survived. The snow had fallen steadily all night, fences were gone, shrubs stood huddled in shapeless obtrusion above the fields, and roads were not—a uniformly undefined surface made road and stonerow equal.

"Snowbound, by John G. Whittier!" exclaimed Bob coming into the dining room. He used the Quaker poet's name as if it were an affirmatory oath.

"Nothing of the sort, Bob!" cried Happie. "We can't be snowbound, not by anybody—not even by snow. We must get to the station—don't you think we can?" she added with an anxious change of tone.

"I think if we must—and you are right that we must—we ought to start this morning," said Bob. "If this began to drift all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't get us through it. And knowing Crestville, it is safe to 'look for wind about this time,' as the almanacs say."

"Aunt Keren is ready to leave on the 11:26, if it is better," said Happie. "You will have to drive down to Jake's to let him know. And, oh, Bob, sit with me going down, for I've something to tell you, and I can't wait—besides they would all hear if I told you in the Patty-Pans."

"I shall consider myself engaged for the final act. If I'm going down to Shale's, I must take a sort of lunch counter breakfast and start. And I'm going to get Gretta to 'go along,' as they say here. I'll go talk to Aunt Keren and find out if she wants me to go."

Bob went off whistling "The stormy winds do blow, blow, blow," and Happie ran to meet Margery, whom she did treat, as Ralph said, "as if she were damaged and liable to drop into nothing before her eyes."

Bob, Gretta and Don Dolor broke their way through the heavy snow, not yet drifted, and fetched back Jake Shale's Aaron, with the blue sled and the Kuntz horses, to take the Archaics to the station. Already the wind was lightly stirring; by afternoon there would be impassable drifts, very possibly, between the Ark and the station.

Rosie bade them all a gruff good-bye, but it was not a dismal one, for in a little more than two months, in May, the Scollards would come back, all of them as they supposed, not knowing what changes were awaiting them.

Mahlon swung his arm and leg together in his usual feeble-minded fashion, but the boys chose to construe it this time as a farewell.

"Yes, ta-ta, Mahlon. Good-bye! Shake a day-day back again to Mahlon, Penny!" said Ralph with his solemn face unsmiling as he waved his hand to Mahlon, a salute that Rosie took to herself and returned with a waving apron.

In the train the party no longer divided evenly, augmented as it was by Miss Bradbury. Gretta joined her, after glancing around and seeing that Bob had dropped into a seat with Happie, at a little distance from any of the others. Happie wondered if she imagined Gretta's face fell ever so slightly as she saw that her companion of the journey up had failed her. Sometimes Happie fancied that Gretta liked to be with Bob as well as she liked to be with Happie herself. She wondered if at some future day when handsome Gretta had grown into a splendid and well-educated woman, Bob might—she shook herself mentally. "Just now she is fifteen! This is what comes of Margery's getting herself engaged so young. I am beginning to be silly about all of us—the others." Happie quickly corrected this slip in the thoughts she was thinking. Perhaps Ralph's slender gold bangle of Christmas came down over her hand at that moment to remind her to except herself from her dreams of the future.

"Now then, Hapsie, let her go! What is this that you want to tell me?" asked Bob, bringing her to the immediate present.

"Aunt Keren called me into her room last night," began Happie. "Bob, she said a good deal that I don't know how to repeat. She told me in the Patty-Pans, some three or four weeks ago, why she cares for us as she does. We are her children, because—it is a dear story, and I'd like to tell it to you nicely, but you can't in a car! She met our grandfather before grandma did, and she thought he was going to care for her, but grandma came, and it was she he loved. And the two girls each cared most for the other to be happy. But it was grandma who married, and dear auntie who didn't. They were devoted friends always, you know. Aunt Keren feels as though mother were her very own, because she was not only her two dear friends' child, but if grandpa had cared most for auntie she would have been auntie's daughter, not grandma's. So, she says, we are her nearest of kin. She wants to adopt me legally, so that there will be no chance of some very horrid nieces breaking her will when she leaves me nearly all her money, by and by. I never told you about those nieces calling and being perfectly outrageous up at the Patty-Pans. I didn't tell even mother. Aunt Keren wants me to have most of her money when she dies. And she wants us to give up the Patty-Pans, and let her take a house somewhere, and come to live with her. We are to come up to Crestville for the summer, and in the autumn she wants us to begin this new plan. Of course I was not to decide it, we shall all have to talk it over together, and it will be as mother says, but that is Aunt Keren's desire. It took my breath away."

"I should rather say so!" exclaimed Bob with a low whistle. "Why, Hap, I never heard such a story, so full of several surprises! you to be legally adopted? And to be an heiress? Has Aunt Keren much money? We all thought her poor."

"Yes, she has a good deal, she says. I don't know how much. I never thought to ask—to wonder, I mean; of course I wouldn't ask about it," said Happie. "I wanted to talk about this to you alone first, because you always were my Rock of Gibraltar, Bobby. Besides, I never know what I think about anything until I talk about it, then I find I have unexpected opinions, for I begin to express them."

The brother and sister talked over Aunt Keren's amazing announcement all the way down to Hoboken, which they reached sooner than any of the others, in a sense, owing to the absorbing interest of their topic. The train was late, impeded by the snow. It was five o'clock before the party reached the Patty-Pans.

They found Mrs. Gordon watching for them with the door of her flat open and Jeunesse Dorée, whom she looked after during the day while he was deserted, in her arms.

"Oh, Ralph, I'm so glad you are here at last!" cried his mother. "I was so relieved when I got Miss Bradbury's telegram this morning saying you would take the earlier train! Dear people, the most wonderful thing has happened! Mrs. Jones-Dexter, my unfortunate Aunt Lucinda, has been here this morning."

"Cæsar's ghost! What for?" cried Ralph. But Margery instantly guessed.

"Serena's ill!" cried Margery.

"Serena is ill," assented Mrs. Gordon. "Poor little Serena is desperately ill, so ill that you must not take off your coat, Ralph, but must go down to the Jones-Dexter house as fast as you can. I only hope you may be in time. The poor little blossom has been begging for you, for her 'kind big boy,' for 'Ralph,' but she did not know any other name for you, and Aunt Lucinda was frantic because she did not know where to find you, while the Scollards were gone. She would do anything to gratify little Serena at any time, but how when she is so ill, it might make a great deal of difference, affect her recovery, if her wishes could be granted. Mrs. Jones-Dexter remembered that the Charlefords might know who Happie's friends were, so she went to them. Mrs. Charleford did know who you were, and told her, Ralph. Then, putting under foot her bitterness of so many years' standing, and her Jones-Dexter pride, the unhappy old lady came here this morning to beg us to take pity on little Serena and send you to her. And she found you gone! Needless to say I promised that you should go to her house the moment you arrived. So go at once, Ralph dear, and stay as long as you are helpful and do all that you can for the child. Strange, that she has taken this violent fancy to her distant and unknown cousin! Hurry, dear Ralph. If you comfort Serena stay, but send me a message if you find you can't come home to-night."

Ralph went away at once. Robert said good-night, and accompanied him. The Scollards closed their door and went into the Patty-Pans feeling that their holiday was indeed over, and that events were rolling up around them faster than an incoming tide. For Margery had come home betrothed, Happie in demand for a legal adoption, and now here was Ralph summoned to the sick bed of his little third cousin, with a family reconciliation and all sorts of possible good results looming up ahead through the mediation of the child. It was saddening to think of little Serena lying dangerously ill, her flower-like little body a prey to fever and to pain. The girls would not think of the other possibility at which Mrs. Gordon had hinted—that Ralph might come too late.

But Laura reveled in grief and fully realized that here was an opportunity. She immediately took possession of the piano, and while Margery and Gretta busied themselves with the household duties involved in a return after a three days' absence, and Happie, with a sober face, went out to the delicatessen shop to supplement the deficiencies of their larder, Laura played dismal music, at the same time composing words for it. Tears of distress rained down her face while she artistically steeped herself in misery of the keenest painful enjoyment, because she was "making little Serena's funeral hymn," she said.

The announcement was too much for Polly. That good little girl, who rarely was cross and never in a passion, flew into one now under the stress of feeling far too strong for her.

"It's not her funeral hymn! Stop that horrid playing Laura Scollard!" she screamed, throwing down Phyllis Lovelocks, her beloved doll, with such violence that the petted creature must have been amazed. "Serena isn't going to have a funeral! She shan't die. I love her, I love her! She's the dearest of all the dancing school children. Stop, Laura! Laura, stop! It's just like a—just like a—just like a cannibal, to do what you're doing, that awful music and those horrid, horrid words!"

Polly's voice had risen to an hysterical shriek, and Margery flew in to calm her.

"Really, Laura, I agree with Polly," she said, gathering the excited child in her arms. "Please don't regard everything as an opportunity for your talents. It may be artistic, but it seems somewhat inhuman."

It was after ten that night when Ralph came home. His mother and Snigs were waiting for him in the Scollard flat. A message had told them that there was no hope of Serena's living till midnight, and that he would return before many hours.

He came at last, a very tired, solemn-looking Ralph, to whom Margery, Happie and Gretta brought hot chocolate and sandwiches, and to whom Mrs. Scollard gave the most comfortable chair.

"I'm not hungry, thanks, Happie," said Ralph. "Yes, I'm glad of the chocolate, Gretta; it's cold out. My little new-found cousin is dead. Poor baby! She looked so frail and sweet. She was a dear little creature. She seemed touchingly glad to see me. She was restless, and I carried her up and down the room, and through the other rooms on that floor until just before—the end. Her grandmother had told her that I was coming, and that I was her cousin. She was very loving. She seemed to be delighted that I was hers, that she had a claim on me. She kissed me and patted my cheek when she could no longer see. Well—we'd better not talk about Serena. I am awfully sorry for Mrs. Jones-Dexter. The child was the one soft spot, the one devotion of her wilful life. Every one else she intended to compel to live for her, but she lived for Serena, and lived IN her. She is an old, broken-down woman to-night. She talked to me in a way that was pretty hard for a boy like me to hear from a woman of her age, but I knew she was crushed under this blow, and that it made her feel better to talk, so I sat still. She wants us to forgive her, mother. And she wants something else. Serena asked her to take care of 'Ralphy' once to-night while I was walking with her, and she said, 'I will do anything for Ralph that he will let me do.' While she was talking to me she told me that she felt as if little Serena had given me to her, in a sense. And she reminded me that she was your own aunt, mother. She begs me to allow her to settle an income on me during her life. It would have been more if it had been given to Serena, she said, but this will be Serena's gift to me. She said—with just a glimpse of her old manner—that she knew we needed money, she had seen our Harlem flat this morning! I hesitated, because I didn't want to take it, mother, and I thought that you wouldn't want it either, and when she saw that I was trying to say no gently, she almost went on her knees to me. It really was awful. She begged me not to be hard on her, to punish her for all her cruel, wilful life—that was what she called it. She said the Jones-Dexter pride had cost her all that made life worth living, and how God had stricken her in her old age. She said I had no right to refuse her a slender comfort, I in whose arms little Serena had died. Little Serena, all that she had! It would go hard with me one day, as it was going hard with her now, if I, with my life all before me, was cruel to an old woman. Mercy on us, you don't know what it was to hear her, and I couldn't speak to tell her that she had misunderstood. As though I wanted to keep up a row that was never mine, nor mother's either, for that matter! Finally she broke down from sheer exhaustion, and then I made her understand that I was not quite the proud, headstrong fellow she thought, and that I would take the gift if mother would allow me to, and that I hoped I might be some comfort to her because my little cousin had loved me. And at last I got away. Talk about pride! If any one could have seen that poor, broken, stiff-necked old lady to-night, desolate, all alone through her own fault, her son dead whom she had quarreled with and driven away, and now this flower-like little idol of her last years dead up-stairs, I think if he were tempted to pride the sight of the Jones-Dexter pride in the dust would humble him! I don't want to go through another such scene. When Serena lay in my arms, gasping, dying, so gentle, so affectionate, I cried like a baby—I don't mind owning it. But it was a sweet sort of grief; the dear little creature seemed so safe and peaceful when we laid her on the pillows at last. But desolate old age, and a proud old woman crushed, that's another sort of pathos."

The circle around him had listened to Ralph without once interrupting him. No one there had ever seen him so stirred and carried beyond his American-boyish self-consciousness and false shame under emotion.

"Dear Ralph, this child's death seems like a providence to soften her hard grandmother. By and by she will be more at peace, if not happier, that Serena left her," said Mrs. Gordon. "Ralph, does this gift help you to college, dear?"

"It would more than solve our problem, mother. If we take the allowance our troubles are over," said Ralph.

"You must take it, of course," said Miss Keren quickly. "No one but a brute would refuse that poor soul a chance to make some amends before she dies, and to feel that she still is doing something for Serena."

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Gordon quietly. "It would be cruel to Aunt Lucinda, and not fair to Ralph to refuse it. Little Serena's love will work him immense good. Margery, dear, this was your bringing about."

"I hoped for something, but I did not foresee this," said Margery through her tears.

CHAPTER XVIII
A SIEGESLIED

All the remaining force of winter had gathered itself together in the snow-storm in which Miss Bradbury's party had left Crestville. When the storm was over the sun came out with such warmth that the streets ran in rivulets before the snow could be shoveled into carts, and people paddled about in rubbers hardly high enough, but with furs swinging well back on over-burdened shoulders.

Spring was anticipating the equinoxial date by nearly two weeks, and more than the disturbance of spring unrest was in the air.

Miss Bradbury was eagerly pressing her claim to a home of her own, a house which could be possible only as Mrs. Scollard consented to share it with her, and which should take the place of Miss Keren's own destroyed apartment and of the Patty-Pans.

"By and by Margery will be married," Miss Keren reminded her adopted family. "When that day comes there won't be room in the Patty-Pans for her to make the promises! And Happie must grow up into her own place in the world, the place to which she was born. You can't entertain in the Patty-Pans. I need you and you need me, Charlotte. I want you to let me legally adopt Happie as my heir, and I want you to bring your children into a house which shall be equally the home of us all. I don't see how you can hesitate! I could be happy as I never was in all my life before. It has been my lifelong dream to share a home and have a family—how can you hesitate, Charlotte?"

But Mrs. Scollard hesitated. The advantages to her little brood were so great in this arrangement, the consequences of the experiment's ending badly, if thus it should end, would be so tragic, that she dared not agree to the tempting proposal until she had weighed it long and carefully.

While it pended, the unsettled feeling of spring made the Patty-Pans its headquarters.

"I never felt so queer and upset in all my life!" Happie declared to Gretta. "I feel as though I were a thin muslin gown hung out in a very high wind by only one clothes pin—I can't tell what minute, nor where I'm going to drop."

Gretta laughed. "As long as you see nothing but soft grass all around, it doesn't matter much," she said.

There was no little excitement in the flat across the hall during these days of untimely warmth. The Gordons had been to see Mrs. Jones-Dexter by special invitation. Mrs. Gordon dreaded going on one ground, and remembered the visit painfully on another. It had seemed formidable to call on an aunt whom she had never known except by forbidding repute, but it was almost worse to find that stern person crushed, pathetically eager to make amends for the bitterness she had sown and fostered, and to do for Ralph all that lay in her power. The boy stood to her less as her grandnephew than as the legacy of little Serena, the "kind big boy" in whose strong arms her frail life had ended.

Another visit had followed the first one, in which Mrs. Gordon and her elder boy were bidden to meet Mrs. Jones-Dexter's lawyers, to receive the principal which Mrs. Jones-Dexter had set aside for Serena's maintenance. The interest of this money would enable Ralph to go through college without a care as to his expenses, and next year he would enter Columbia.

Ralph had been ready to face the self-denials, the effort of working his way through the four years that lay ahead of him, but it was not a little thing suddenly to be freed from this necessity. It meant a great deal to the mother and to both boys, and the flat across from the Patty-Pans was full of grateful excitement as the March days went by in which these important happenings were perfecting.

Easter fell on an early date that year, and little Mrs. Stewart was busy preparing for her spring exhibition. More than the languor of spring was in the delicate little woman's eye and carriage. Lassitude that was rather mental than bodily weariness was betrayed by her every motion. She came oftener into the tea room in the morning and Margery and she became great friends. The young girl's confident happiness drew the older woman to her, and she won Margery to talk of her hopes and plans. It was not hard for Margery to see that she listened to them much as one reads and re-reads a poem that brings the tears which comfort in their shedding.

Mrs. Stewart did not return Margery's confidences on her own young romance by the story of her unhappy life, nor did she precisely withhold such confidence. By a word here and there the girls learned that the little dancing mistress with the lovely face and gracious manners, was one of those pathetic creatures, a lady cut off from her proper setting in life, deprived of the support that should have been hers and without which she was peculiarly unfitted to exist. Physically and instinctively Mrs. Stewart was ill-adapted to combat the world. Margery knew without being told in so many words, that the little dancing mistress' husband had been a German, an extraordinary musician who had given up, for his art's sake, his family, which was one among the lesser nobility of the Fatherland. But she knew also that he had selfishly sacrificed to his music the frail American wife he had married after coming to the United States, and that in some manner that Margery did not understand, he had neglected her, been cruel to her, and that his one child had died because the heart-broken mother could not give him what he required.

Margery's heart went out to Mrs. Stewart more than ever when this story had been learned piecemeal. She and Happie discussed it night after night when they should have been asleep. Happie was enraged by it and pointed out to Margery the dangers of marriage, but Margery wept over it without so much indignation. She could not help pitying the man who had been guilty of thus wronging such a lovable creature as Mrs. Stewart. Both girls wondered, but never discovered, whether he were alive or dead. Margery felt sure he must be dead, or he would have returned, but Happie was equally certain that he was alive, basing her opinion on the general feeling that an out-and-out wretch is likely to be long for this world.

One thing was clear: if her husband had been a German Mrs. Stewart's name could not be Stewart. What, then, was it? It was most interesting, and rather exciting, to feel that they knew the heroine of a pathetic story, a story that included an incognita for its heroine!

In the meantime this heroine was preparing for the Eastertide exhibition of her school. Little Serena's death cast a shade of melancholy over the remaining weeks. Mistress and pupils alike, missed and mourned the exquisite little child whose pretty ways had pervaded every hour of the winter. Serena was to have danced the solo dance, and now the honor was to be Penny's. Penny was beside herself with delight. There hardly could have been a sharper contrast to ethereal Serena than Penny was, Penny, all color and life and decision. She danced well, with animation, gaiety, abandonment, to the pleasure of the moment. Serena had danced like the milkweed silk to which Laura had compared her, floatingly, dreamily, as if swayed by the breeze. Dear little white Serena, who had floated away as softly as the milkweed floats heavenward in the soft winds of September!

The tea room seemed to be more popular than it had been during the winter, now that the warm days made people weary, ready to rest and to sip tea on the slightest pretext. The girls were so much interested in the preparations up-stairs that it was a trial to them to be kept from slipping up to the rehearsals. Only Laura contrived to go, no matter how busy they were in the tea room. It was Laura's way to do precisely what she pleased, though the sky fell.

It was the Wednesday after Easter, and the exhibition was to be on Friday afternoon. Polly and Penny were up-stairs with Mrs. Stewart, having come down with the older girls that morning for the last rehearsal of their dances. The tea room was unusually full for a forenoon. Gretta and Happie were flying about, while Margery was patiently discussing novels with a succession of people who wanted to borrow—not merely a book from the shelves, but guidance from the Six Maidens as to their choice. It was somewhat trying to be forced to meet book talk so early in the morning, to match adjective with adjective, and to respond interestedly to commonplaces. Margery acquitted herself perfectly, but Happie caught her eye and nearly upset her with the gleam in her own, as, passing, she heard a lady declare for modern writers in preference to mid-Victorian novelists—"Thackeray and Dickens were so tiresome!" she said.

Herr Lieder came in just then, and Happie surprised herself by hailing him with sincere pleasure. He wore his great coat thrown far back because of the heat, but he atoned for this by having his hat more than ever drooping over his face. A look of gloom, beyond the ordinary, he wore, and he went straight to the piano as if for that only he were there.

Laura followed him, inevitably. He threw down hat and cloak tragically, and seated himself without a morning salutation to his "little Clara Schumann."

Bending over the keys he sat in silence for a few moments, then he began to play Chopin's Marche Funèbre, played it as it is rarely played, until the awful throbs of the first theme seemed to his hearers like the suffocating beating of their own hearts.

As he ended his head fell forward again upon his breast, and Laura, turning to him with her face as pale as emotion could make it, cried: "Herr Lieder, Herr Lieder, don't play—like that!"

Hans Lieder glanced at her. "This is the third of April. Fourteen years ago to-day my only child was born," he said.

"Is he dead?" Laura managed to ask.

"He is dead, through my own fault. Even Chopin could not express the despair this day brings to me. I have no right to be here, but this piano is so like my own, and I was so miserable that I rose up, and came," said this strange man. His hands on the keys wandered into more of Chopin's despairing music, and Laura did not venture to protest, though it suffocated her with a sense of misery that she could not understand.

Up-stairs little Mrs. Stewart was in despair of another sort. Again her pianist had failed her. She knew no way out of her difficulty except once more to appeal to Laura for help. She disliked to do this, knowing that the little girl was needed in the tea room. Polly eagerly offered her sister's aid, and volunteered to go down to fetch her, but Mrs. Stewart said that if she must bother her dear little neighbors she would go herself to explain matters, and so it came about that she went.

As she came lightly down the stairs the music of Herr Lieder's making came towards her. At first she heard it indistinctly, but as she proceeded it reached her ears plainly, and she stopped. Her hand pressed her side and her lips parted.

"No one else ever played like that, played THAT like that!" she murmured half aloud. With hardly a pause, as the Nocturne ended Hans Lieder had passed into the Rondo of Beethoven's Sonata Pathétique. The little dancing mistress groaned.

"Oh, I mustn't listen! It is the day that makes me imaginative. It is the Herr Lieder of whom the children have told me! But I have never been reminded of his playing before——" She shook herself together, proceeded down the few remaining stairs, and went around to the rear door that opened on the hall, entering the tea room by that way.

Her face was so ghastly white that Gretta, turning from the gas stove on which she was making tea, set down the teapot she held and sprang towards her.

"Mrs. Stewart! Are you sick?" she cried.

"No, not at all; only tired," replied Mrs. Stewart. "Gretta, are you very busy here this morning? My pianist has not come, and I wanted to beg Laura to take pity on me again. But if you can't spare her say so honestly, and I'll slip back the way I came without speaking to Margery or Hap—— Gretta, who is playing?"

She stopped herself so abruptly, turning, if possible, paler than before as Herr Lieder drifted into a heart breaking little Russian song, that Gretta was frightened.

"That is Herr Lieder, who plays for us sometimes, plays so wonderfully," she said. "We are busy, Mrs. Stewart, but I am sure we can get on very well without Laura. When Herr Lieder plays she is no use anyway. Come through with me to the front, and speak to the girls."

Gretta led the way through "the portière that hung between the tea and the room," as Happie had once said. She heard a sound like a sob that was half a stifled cry, and turned to see Mrs. Stewart fallen back against the wall, her hands clutching her throat, her wide eyes staring at Herr Lieder with indescribable terror.

Gretta's little teapot fell to the floor with a crash as she sprang to catch the swaying woman. But Mrs. Stewart was not swooning. She pushed Gretta away with both hands as the girl came between her and the piano, at which she still gazed with fixed, dilated eyes.

The breaking china and Gretta's exclamation as she turned back to Mrs. Stewart, drew towards them every one's attention. Margery and Happie hastened to Gretta's assistance and the ladies grouped about at the different tables pushed back their chairs, or arose, ready to offer help.

The stir reached Herr Lieder at the piano. He glanced over his shoulder carelessly, not interested in tea room events. Margery was between him and a clear sight of Mrs. Stewart, but as he turned away again Margery moved to one side, and he hastily looked a second time at the little dancing teacher standing motionless with her hands still clasping her throat, her white face thrown into relief against the dark red curtain.

Herr Lieder leaped to his feet, overturning the piano stool. He, too, stood motionless, staring at that white face which stared at him. He began to shake in every muscle of his tall figure. Then one long-fingered, thin hand reached out and clutched frightened Laura's arm, though Herr Lieder's eyes did not waver from the eyes that held them across the room. He twice tried to speak but failed. Then he whispered hoarsely: "Wer ist—who is that?"

"Mrs. Stewart"—Laura had begun, when Mrs. Stewart sprang forward with a cry that brought all to their feet and made them fall away to allow her passage. "Gaspar!" she screamed, and fell fainting at the feet of the mysterious Herr Lieder. The tall man stooped and tried to raise her, but he was himself in too much need of support to accomplish it. Gretta came to help him with her strong young arms, and several ladies present, who were immensely excited at finding themselves witnesses to a drama they did not understand, in turn helped Gretta, and between them they got Mrs. Stewart into a great chair.

"Where am I to take her? We cannot stay here among so many," asked Herr Lieder abruptly.

"Her own rooms are above this," said Happie. "But the children are there for a rehearsal. I don't know——"

"She has her living rooms above that. Do you forget, Happie?" suggested Margery. "We will carry her there. I will tell her pupils that Mrs. Stewart has been suddenly taken ill, and dismiss them. Let us get her up-stairs before she becomes conscious; it will be easier for her. You are her husband, Herr Lieder?"

"You have guessed right, Miss Scollard. I am her husband who never expected to see her face again—nor deserved to, nor deserved to! I am Gaspar von Siegeslied." Herr Lieder turned away from Margery with a groan, but he turned to little Mrs. Stewart as she lay unconscious in the chair and took her up in his arms, the expression of his face plainly declaring that if he had neither expected nor deserved to see his wife again, he had hungrily longed to see her.

Margery and Gretta went with Herr Lieder—Herr von Siegeslied—to do what they could for his wife, leaving Happie and Laura disturbed beyond all possibility of tea room duties being properly attended to for the rest of that morning.

It was more than an hour before Margery and Gretta came down. In the meantime Polly and Penny had arrived, disappointed by Margery's announcement that there was to be no rehearsal that day, and full of eager questions as to Mrs. Stewart's sudden illness. "Because, Happie, it really might make it seem as if the tea room had something unhealthy in its tea," said Polly solemnly. "She came down here to get Laura to play, and she was perfectly well. And then she came back too ill to come back—I mean she had to send Margery to dismiss us. I hoped the girls wouldn't think anything."