too, and smile at it.

When they went back to the bench Ellen was gone, but in the hall they
found her dancing with Clyde, and almost, it seemed, clad in the flying
mantle of her youth.

"It's Virginny reel," cried Andrew, the infection of the night upon him.
"There's another set here. Come."

"Wait a minute," said Isabel, her hand upon his arm. "Look at the
platform. Where's the old folks gone?"

The platform was deserted. The old folks, too, were dancing. Martha
Waterman caught the recognition of it in Isabel's eyes, pointed at the
empty seats of eld, and nodded gayly. She sped out of her place and,
losing no step, danced up to Isabel and Andrew.

"I dunno which's the youngest, old or young," she cried, "nor they don't
either. We're goin' to have some country dancin' an' then serve the
coffee an' sing 'Auld Lang Syne,' an' it's my opinion we sha'n't be home
'fore two o'clock. Ain't it just grand!"

A POETESS IN SPRING

Jerry Freelands felt that the day was not suitably ended if, after
tidying up the kitchen and practicing "The Harp That Once" and "Oft in
the Stilly Night" on his fiddle, he did not go across the fields to
Marietta Martin's and compare the moment's mood with her, either in the
porch or at her fireside, according to the season. They lived, each
alone, in a stretch of meadow land just off the main road, and nobody
knew how many of their evenings they spent together, or, at this middle
stage in their lives, would have drawn romantic conclusions if the tale
of them had been told.

In his youth Jerry had been a solitary, given to wandering "by the
river's brim," as he liked to say, thinking of poetry and his fiddle.
Marietta, even at that time, had been learning tailoring to support her
mother, and she looked upon Jerry with unstinted admiration as too
distinctly set apart by high attainments ever to be considered a common
earthly swain. But Jerry did all his duties as if he were not gifted. He
carried on the small farm, and, after his sister married and went away,
nursed his mother until her death--"as handy as a woman," so the
neighbors said. Yet he knew that all this tribute to the lower life was
only something mysteriously decreed, perhaps to ballast the soul lest it
soar too high. The real things were fiddle-playing and writing verse,
sometimes inspired by nature and again by love or death, and publishing
it in the county paper. Jerry had one consolation, one delight, besides
and abov