ost
people; she brightened with a caressing, artistic sense of pleasure in
them.

"Well, I like that!" said her cousin, having by this time framed a
rejoinder to her question. "Grace and I haven't thpooned anything like
you and Note did, thailing down, only you're so deuced thly about it!"

"You are disgusting," said she, too lofty and serene to be annoyed.

I had my hat and was slipping out on my errand to the boat. Vesty,
with evident distress, was about to explain: I put my finger to my lips
with another side glance of such meaning that she kept still and even
smiled again.

I called a man and brought him to the house for Mrs. Forrester's
directions. He soon returned with the rugs, which Vesty accepted for
her baby as well as she could; Uncle Benny all the time singing
gleefully.

The party moved to go; in passing through the door Mrs. Forrester
dropped her handkerchief. I picked it up and handed it to her.

"Thank you, my poor fellow," she said; "you have the manners of a
prince!" and put a coin in my hand--a piece of silver. I took the
money.

Vesty was still, after they were gone, her hands over her face. I knew
well what thoughts she was thinking.

"Do not go," she said to me, and her voice was like the low cry of her
own child; "you are smiling still." She looked at me with strained
eyes.

"Well, perhaps because I am glad Mrs. Garrison would not adopt you and
take you away from the Basin; perhaps because I am glad no handsome
rake will ever ogle you as our lisping young man did Mrs. Notely
Garrison."

"It meant nothing between them all," said Vesty, her hand over her
eyes; "you know that better than I. It is only the way they do."

"It meant nothing! It is only the way they do."

I put away the violin Notely's fingers had so lately touched. The
tears stole down Vesty's cheeks and trembled on her lips.

"He does not care," she said; "that is the worst! He does not care as
he did once."

"For what, Vesty?"

"For anything but having a good time and making fun with people, and
all that. He used to talk with me--oh, so high and noble, about
things!" Her eyes flashed, then darkened again with pain.

"Ay, I know he has seen the model and been pierced with it. He can
never forget; he will come back."

"The model?"

"You know once there was a Master who was determined all his people
should paint him a picture after a great model he had set before them.
It seemed not to be an attrac