attention. Once, Ralph was missing from the room for some
little time, which worried her greatly, but when he came back, she
noticed that he nodded and smiled to Kittie, which was unintelligible to
her, but was readily understood by her sister, to mean that everything
was right. Just as the young hostess had decided that it was time to
serve refreshments, some one asked her to sing.

"I? Oh, I never sing," she said with a modest blush, and drawing back,
while her heart began to flutter nervously.

"I'm quite sure you do," persisted the young lady; whereupon the request
was strengthened by all voices; and conscious that it would be impolite
to still refuse, Bea walked to the piano, with her fingers growing cold
as ice, and a die-away feeling in her throat. It took a few minutes to
spin up the stool and decide what to sing, then in a voice that would
quaver, she began a little Scotch song, and was just through the first
verse when things began to look strange. Was it because she was so
nervous, or was it growing dark? She played a few rambling chords, then
she stopped and looked at the lamp with a chilly foreboding, and--_it
was going out_!

Somebody else had noticed it before she did, and now as she sat in
blank, dazed mortification, some one crossed the room, and lifting the
lamp, blew it out, saying with a careless laugh:

"Several adventurous bugs were burning themselves to death, so I have
ended their, and our misery, by putting out what they were slowly
killing, and now while they are being dislodged, and the lamp relighted,
shall we adjourn to the porch, ladies and gentlemen? The moon is coming
up gorgeously."

Bea could have gone down on her knees in gratitude to him, and Kat, the
terrible, actually threw him a kiss in the dark, before she rushed out
to the kitchen, where Bea had carried the lamp.

"It's all my fault, every bit," she cried remorsefully. "I thought this
morning, when I cleaned the lamps, that I would wait until it got cooler
to go up after the coal-oil, and then I forgot it, clean as a shingle,
and I'll do anything under the sun if you'll forgive me."

"Don't talk," said Bea sharply, too excited and nervous to say much.
"Go, bring every lamp in the house, quick!"

"Never mind," exclaimed Kittie, coming hurriedly in, as Kat went off on
a rush. "Don't feel bad, Bea, not a soul noticed it, and you were
singing beautifully; besides you just ought to look in the dining-room;
there's the most ma