se lightest
smile brave courtiers fought and bled.

"That's it, keep your head up!" he cried, as with many steppings
backward and forward, he conducted her to the old chair, and with the
air of a grand chamberlain placed her upon it, adding in mock
gallantry:

"Sit there, fair lady mine, while your humble slave makes obeisance.
To touch the hem of your garment would be--Oh, but aren't you lovely!
And the tone of old ivory in the satin, and the exquisite flesh
notes--and the way the curl lies on the shoulder! You are adorable!"

And so the picture was begun.

The hours and the days that followed were hours and days of
never-ending joy and frolic. While it was still "Mr. Gregg" and "Mrs.
Colton," it was as often "Uncle Adam" by little Phil (the three were
never separated) and now and then "Marse Adam" by old Bundy, who
sought in this way to emphasize his master's injunction to "look after
Mr. Gregg's comfort."

[Illustration: And so the picture was begun.]

Nor did the supervision stop here. Under Olivia's instructions and
with Bundy's help, the big dining-room table, with the Judge's seat at
one end, hers at the other, and little Phil in his high chair in the
middle, was given up and moved out as being altogether too formal and
the seats too far apart, and a small one, sprinkled daily with fresh
damask roses that she herself had culled from the garden, was
substituted. The great window in the library, which had always been
kept closed by reason of a draught which carromed on the door of the
study and struck the Judge somewhere between his neck and his
shoulders, was now thrown wide and kept wide, and the porch chairs,
three of them, which had precise positions fixed for them between
the low windows, were dragged out under the big apple-tree shading
the lawn and moved up to another table that Bundy had carried down
from one of the spare rooms.

And then the joy of being for the first time the real head of the
house when "company" was present--free to pour out her hospitality in
her own way--free to fix the hours of breakfast, dinner, and supper,
and what should be cooked, and how served; free to roam the rooms at
her pleasure, in and out of the silent study without the
never-infringed formality of a knock.

And the long talks in the improvised studio, she sitting under the big
north window in the softened light of the sheet; the joy she took in
his work; the charm of his sympathetic companionship. Then the long