like English roses from some walled garden at
home, and their refined beauty had grown to a fuller blossom on the
prairie. Still, I knew they would have faded in the dry heat of the
dwellings in an Eastern town.

"How do those French-Canadians learn to play like that?" said Harry. "No
one taught them; inherited it, I suppose. I know that air; it's very old,
and he's taking liberties with it masterfully; now it's like the cypress
singing in the big coulee. Of course, it wasn't learned in one generation,
but why does a waltz of that kind unsettle one so, with a suggestion of
ancient sorrow sighing through its gladness? But I'm forgetting, and
vaporing again. We are ox-drivers, you and I."

I nodded silently, for I had not the gift of ready speech, and it was
Harry who most often put my thoughts into words for me. Then I grew intent
as he said:

"There she is. Who!--Miss Carrington--is there any one else to look at
when she is in the room?"

Grace floated past us dressed as I had somewhere seen her before and could
not recall it, though the memory puzzled me. Neither do I know what she
wore, beyond that the fabric's color was of the ruddy gold one sees among
the stems of ripening grain, while wheat ears nestled between her neck and
shoulder, and rustled like barley rippling to the breeze, as with the
music embodied in each movement of her form she whirled by us on Ormond's
arm. He looked as he did when I last saw him, placidly good-humored, with
the eyeglass dangling this time loosely by its cord.

Then I drew in my breath as the music ceased, and Raymond Lyle approached
us, saying: "As usual, men are at a discount, but you have not had a
dance, and most of the others have. Come, and I'll find you partners. Ah,
if you are not tired, Miss Carrington, will you take pity on an old friend
of yours? I have many duties, and you will excuse me."

He withdrew quickly, and Grace smiled. "One must never be too tired to
dance with an old friend at a prairie feast," she said, running her pencil
through the initials on a program which had traveled several hundred miles
from Winnipeg. Then I felt uncomfortable, for I guessed the letters
R. L. represented my host, who had good-naturedly made way for me. It
was a kindly thought, but Raymond Lyle, who was a confirmed bachelor
living under his self-willed sister's wing, had evidently guessed my
interest and remembered the incident of the jibbing team. It was a square
dance, and Harry