bird-song. It seemed as if
all the feathered creatures in London must be assembled in her garden;
and the old verse came into her head:

"All dear Nature's children sweet
Lie at bride and bridegroom's feet,
Blessing their sense.
Not a creature of the air,
Bird melodious or bird fair,
Be absent hence!"

She turned and looked at her husband. He lay with his head snoozled down
into the pillow, so that she could only see his thick, rumpled hair. And
a shiver went through her, exactly as if a strange man were lying there.
Did he really belong to her, and she to him--for good? And was this
their house--together? It all seemed somehow different, more serious and
troubling, in this strange bed, of this strange room, that was to be so
permanent. Careful not to wake him, she slipped out and stood between the
curtains and the window. Light was all in confusion yet; away low down
behind the trees, the rose of dawn still clung. One might almost have
been in the country, but for the faint, rumorous noises of the town
beginning to wake, and that film of ground-mist which veils the feet of
London mornings. She thought: "I am mistress in this house, have to
direct it all--see to everything! And my pups! Oh, what do they eat?"

That was the first of many hours of anxiety, for she was very
conscientious. Her fastidiousness desired perfection, but her
sensitiveness refused to demand it of others--especially servants. Why
should she harry them?

Fiorsen had not the faintest notion of regularity. She found that he
could not even begin to appreciate her struggles in housekeeping. And
she was much too proud to ask his help, or perhaps too wise, since he was
obviously unfit to give it. To live like the birds of the air was his
motto. Gyp would have liked nothing better; but, for that, one must not
have a house with three servants, several meals, two puppy-dogs, and no
great experience of how to deal with any of them.

She spoke of her difficulties to no one and suffered the more. With
Betty--who, bone-conservative, admitted Fiorsen as hardly as she had once
admitted Winton--she had to be very careful. But her great trouble was
with her father. Though she longed to see him, she literally dreaded
their meeting. He first came--as he had been wont to come when she was a
tiny girl--at the hour when he thought the fellow to whom she now
belonged would most likely be out. Her heart beat, when