knows,
perhaps, that there is little reward in being a dog, unless you cheat
yourself by believing more than the facts warrant. But presently he is
up to dash at a bird, with a fine forgetfulness, quite as startled by
the trick of flight as in his first days. And I, envying him his gift of
credulity, weakly strive for it.

As I have said, I had noted that in these free dreamings of mine the
painted face above my neighbor's mantel seemed to have had a place long
before I looked upon its actual lines. This perplexed me not a little;
that the face should seem to have been familiar before I had seen
it--the portrait, that it should have blended with and then almost
replaced another's, so that now the woman face I saw was eloquent of
two, though fittingly harmonized in itself. Must I lay to the philter's
magic this audacious notion; that the face of Little Miss had tangibly
come to me in some night of the mind? Sober, I was loath to commit this
absurdity; but breasting drunkenly that tide of dreams, it ceased to be
absurd.

And so I had plunged into the current again one early evening when the
growing things seemed to have stopped reluctantly for rest, when the
robins had fluted of their household duties the last time for the day,
and when only the songs of children at a game were brought to me from a
neighboring yard.

Unconsciously my thoughts fell into the rhythm of this song, with the
result that I presently listened to catch its words--faint, childish,
laughing, yet musical in the scented dusk:--

"King William was King James's son and from the royal race he sprung;
Upon his breast he wore a star that showed the royal points of war.
Go choose your east and choose your west, and choose the one that you
love best.
If she's not here to take your part, go choose another with all your
heart.
Down on this carpet you must kneel, low as the grass grows in yon field.
Salute your bride and kiss her sweet, and then arise upon your feet."

The sentiment was ill suited to my own at the moment, but the raw-voiced
little singers appealed to my ears not unpleasantly. Again the verse
came--

"If she's not here to take your part--go choose another with all your
heart!"

I heard wheels then, nearer than the singing,--the clumsy rumble of our
big yellow 'bus. Voices were borne to me,--Clem's voice, Miss Caroline's
and another not like her's, a voice firmer, yet a dusky-warm woman's
voice. That