ds of
plants and pots of plants--the whole place was sweet with the smell,
and green with the leaves, and brilliant with the flowers--"

"Seems to have been brilliant generally."

"So it was, just _brilliant_, with all that, and with the lights, and
with the people."

"Were the people brilliant too?"

"And the playing."

"O,--the playing!"

"Everybody said so. It wasn't like Mrs. Barclay's playing."

"What was it like?"

"It looked like very hard work, to me. My dear, I saw the drops of
sweat standing on one man's forehead;--he had been playing a pretty
long piece," Madge added, by way of accounting for things. "I never saw
anything like it, in all my life!"

"Like what?--sweat on a man's forehead?"

"Like the playing. Don't be ridiculous."

"It is not I," said Lois, who meanwhile had risenn and was getting
dressed. Madge was doing the same, talking all the while. "So the
playing was something to be _seen_. What was the singing?"

Madge stood still, comb in hand. "I don't know!" she said gravely. Lois
could not help laughing.

"Well, I don't," Madge went on. "It was so queer, some of it, I did not
know which way to look. Some of it was regular yelling, Lois; and if
people are going to yell, I'd rather have it out-of-doors. But one
man--I think he thought he was doing it remarkably well--the goings up
and down of his voice--"

"Cadences--"

"Well, the cadences if you choose; they made me think of nothing but
the tones of the lions and other beasts in the menagerie. Don't you
know how they roar up and down? first softly and then loud? I had
everything in the world to do not to laugh out downright. He was
singing something meant to be very pathetic; and it was absolutely
killing."

"It was not all like that, I suppose?"

"No. There was some I liked. But nothing one-half so good as your
singing a hymn, Lois. I wish you could have been there to give them
one. Only you could not sing a hymn in such a place."

"Why not?"

"Why, because! It would be out of place."

"I would not go anywhere where a hymn would be out of place."

"That's nonsense. But O, how the people were dressed, Lois! Brilliant!
O you may well say so. It took away my breath at first"

"You got it again, I hope?"

"Yes. But O, Lois, it _is_ nice to have plenty of money."

"Well, yes. And it is nice _not_ to have it--if the Lord makes it so."

"Makes _what_ so? You are very unsympathetic this morning, Lois! But if
you had only