ther, one
cascade after another of liquid delicious sweetness. Fields, woods,
copses, and dells; sunlight, moonlight, seas and streams, all, all were
in Jetty's passion of song.

Gardiner had left his sister's side and stood under the bird-cage gazing
up with an enraptured face. He made a pretty, quaint figure in the
deserted room, in his gingham apron and his untidy blonde hair.

Bella heard some one say, "What wonderful singing, Mrs. Carew." And she
looked at her mother for the first time. The lady was all in white with
a bit of old black point crossed at her breast and a red camellia
fastened there. Her soft fine hair was unpretentiously drawn away
neatly, and her doe-like eyes rested amiably on her guests. She seemed
to enjoy her unwonted entertainment.

Still Bella clung to her hiding-place, fascinated by the subdued noise
of the service, the clinking of the glasses, listening intelligently to
a clever raconteur when he told his anecdote, and clapping her hand on
her mouth to keep from joining aloud in the praise that followed, and
the bead of excitement mounted to her head like the wine that filled the
glasses, the engraved deer and pheasant glasses, three of which had been
massacred upstairs. The dinner had nearly reached its end when the
children slipped down, and the scraping of chairs and a lull made Bella
realize where she was, and when she escaped she found that Gardiner had
made his little journey upstairs without her guardianship. Bella's mind
was working rapidly, for her heart was on fire with a scheme. In her
bright dress she leaned close to the dark wainscoting of the stairway
and heard Jetty sing. How he sang! _That_ was music!

"Why do people sing when there are birds!" Bella thought. Low and sweet,
high and fine, the running of little country brooks, unattainable as a
weather vane in the sun.

Bella was at a pitch of sensitive emotion and she felt her heart swell
and her eyes fill. She would have wept ignominiously, but instead shot
upstairs, a red bird herself, and rushed to the cabinet where her
childish treasures were stored away.

CHAPTER XIII

The sculptor Cedersholm had come from Sweden himself a poor boy. He had
worked his way into recognition and fame, but his experience in life had
embittered rather than softened him. He early discovered that there is
nothing but example that we can learn from the poor or take from the
poor, and he avoided everything that did not add to his f