d, a moment later, "It means
whatever it says to your heart."

It was at her half-humorous suggestion that he went back, presently, to
work at the piano. She settled contentedly near him where with an
outstretched hand she could occasionally respond to his touch. They
hadn't, either of them, very much to say.

Once the work was interrupted, when he asked, rather tensely, "Do you
want me to come to Ravinia?"

She found herself at a loss for a categorical reply. She'd have thought
that a whole-hearted yes would have been the only thing she could say.

"I don't want you--tortured any more with unheard melodies," she answered
after a moment's reflection.

His nod, decisive as it was, struck her as equivocal. But she was too
happy to probe into anything this afternoon. There would be plenty of
time; unstinted hours. It was with no more than a mild regret that she
heard, under the windows, the return of the big car with Aunt Lucile.
This inextinguishable happiness expressed itself in the touch of impudent
mischief with which she slipped up close behind Anthony March and, in the
last possible instant before her aunt's entrance into the room, bent down
and kissed him; then flashed back to her decorously distant chair.

It was funny how calm she was. This day that was closing down over the
hill behind the apple house couldn't be, it seemed, the same that had
dawned over the lake at Ravinia. The whole Ravinia episode, even as she
told Lucile and March about it, seemed remote, like something out of a
book; but became for that very reason, rather pleasant to dwell upon.
Sylvia came in pretty soon for a critical survey of what March had
accomplished with the piano, volunteered to help and attempted to. But
having pled some of Anthony's arrangements of loose parts, she was
sacked off the job and sent back to the hay field to bring the boys in
for supper.

After supper the excitement over the piano increased. They all gathered
round March like people watching a conjurer's trick when he slid the
action into place and proved, chromatically, that every hammer would
strike and every key return.

"But it isn't tuned at all," Sylvia wailed. "It will be hours before you
can play on it."

"Minutes," March corrected with a grin. And they watched, amazed,--but
less so really than an ordinary piano tuner would have been,--at the way
he caught octaves, fifths and fourths, sixths and thirds up and down that
keyboard like a juggler keepi