e others, peering among the shadows, and gazing wide-eyed
into the clusters of iris flowers above which night moths fluttered
softly and silently. Maybe there were fairies there. Three could ride
at once on the back of a devil's riding horse, she knew, and in the
daytime they rode the dragon flies, two at a time; they were so light
it was nothing for the great green and gold, big-eyed dragon flies to
carry two.

Betty knew a place below the spring where the maidenhair fern grew
thick and spread out wide, perfect fronds on slender brown stems,
shading fairy bowers; and where taller ferns grew high and leaned over
like a delicate fairy forest; and where the wild violets grew so thick
you could not see the ground beneath them, and the grass was lush and
long like fine green hair, and crept up the hillside and over the
roots of the maple and basswood trees. Here lived the elves; she knew
them well, and often lay with her head among the violets, listening
for the thin sound of their elfin fiddles. Often she had drowsed the
summer noon in the coolness, unheeding the dinner call, until busy
Martha roused her with the sisterly scolding she knew she deserved and
took in good part.

Now as Betty crept cautiously about, peering and hoping with a
half-fearing expectation, a sweet, threadlike wail trembled out toward
her across the moonlit and shadowed space. Her father was tuning his
violin. Her mother sat at his side, hushing Bobby in her arms. Betty
could hear the sound of her rockers on the porch floor. Now the
plaintive call of the violin came stronger, and she hastened back to
curl up at her father's feet and listen. She closed her vision-seeing
eyes and leaned against her father's knee. He felt the gentle pressure
of his little daughter's head and liked it.

All the long summer day Betty's small feet had carried her on
numberless errands for young and old, and as the season advanced she
would be busier still. This Betty well knew, for she was old enough to
remember other summers, several of them, each bringing an advancing
crescendo of work. But oh, the happy days! For Betty lived in a world
all her own, wherein her play was as real as her work, and labor was
turned by her imaginative little mind into new forms of play, and
although night often found her weary--too tired to lie quietly in her
bed sometimes--the line between the two was never in her thoughts
distinctly drawn.

To-night Betty's conscience was troubling her