its melody and young
feet keeping step to its measure. Then the tired, happy company broke into
groups. Good-bys and good wishes were given again and again, and the party
was over.

The couples took their way up or down the old Grass River trail or out
across the prairie by-roads, with the moon sailing serenely down the west.
Everybody voted it the finest party ever given on Grass River. And nobody
at all, except his mother and Jo Bennington, noticed that Thaine had not
left Leigh Shirley's side from his first dance with her late in the
evening until the time of the good-bys.

As the guests were leaving Thaine turned to Jo, saying:

"I'm sorry about that last dance, but I'll forgive Todd this last time.
Rosie cut her hand on a glass tumbler she dropped and I was helping Leigh
to tie it up when old Bo Peep started the music. Here's the girl I'm to
take home. Got your draperies on already. The carriage waits and the black
steed paws for us by the chicken yard gate. Good-night, gentle beings."
And taking Leigh's arm, he led her away.

"Gimpke is as awkward as a cow," Jo Bennington declared, "and too stupid
to know what's said to her."

But Rosie Gimpke, standing in the shadows of the darkened dining room, was
not too stupid to understand what was said about her. And into her stolid
brain came dreams that night of a fair face with soft golden brown hair
and kindly eyes of deep, tender blue. Stupid as she was, the woman's
instinct in her told her in her dreams that the handsome young son of her
employer might not always look his thoughts nor dance earliest and
oftenest with the girl he liked best. But Rosie was dull and slept heavily
and these things came to her sluggish brain only in fleeting dreams.

Thaine and Leigh did not hurry on their homeward way. And Jo Bennington,
wide awake in the guest room of the Aydelot house, noted that the moon was
far toward the west when Thaine let himself in at the side door and
slipped up stairs unheard by all the household except herself.

"Let's go down by the lake," Thaine suggested as he and Leigh came to the
edge of the grove. "It's full to the bridge, and the lilies are wide open
now. Are you too sleepy to look at them? You used to draw them with chalk
all along the blackboard in the old schoolhouse up there."

"I'm never too sleepy to look at water lilies in the moonlight," Leigh
replied, "nor too tired to paint them, either. Lilies are a part of my
creed. 'Consider the lil