dresses is trimmed with, and sometimes it's a flower, a rose, yer know;
and the lord sings again--can yer sing?"

Her companion repressed a smile. "I can manage a tune or two at a
pinch."

"And the lady comes out on the balcony and leans over--like this, yer
know;" she jumped up and leaned over the rail of the float, keeping her
hands well in front of her to save her apron; "and she listens and keeps
looking, and when he sings he's going to die because he loves her so,
she throws the token down to him to let him know he mustn't die 'coz she
loves him too; and he catches it, the rose, yer know, and smells it and
then he kisses it and squeezes it against his heart--" she forgot her
greasy hands in the rapture of this imaginative flight, and pressed them
theatrically over her gingham apron beneath which her own little organ
was pulsing quick with the excitement of this telling moment; "--and
then the moon shines just as bright as silver and--and she marries him."

She drew a deep breath. During the recital she had lost herself in the
personating of the favorite characters from her one novel. While she
stood there looking out on the lake and the Flamsted Hills with eyes
that were still seeing the gardens and marble terraces of Isola Bella,
Champney Googe had time to fix that picture on his mental retina and,
recalling it in after years, knew that the impression was "more lasting
than bronze."

She came rather suddenly to herself when she grew aware of her larded
hands pressed against her clean apron.

"Oh, gracious, but I'll catch it!" she exclaimed ruefully. "Wot'll I do
now? She said I'd got to keep it clean till she got back, and she'll
fire me and--and I want to stay awful; it's just like the story, yer
know." She raised her gray eyes appealingly to his, and he saw at once
that her childish fear was real. He comforted her.

"I'll tell you what: we'll go back to Hannah and she'll fix it for you;
and if it's spoiled I'll go down and get some like it in the village and
my mother will make you a new one. So, cheer up, Miss Aileen Armagh
and-don't-yer-forget-it! And to-morrow evening, if the moon is out,
we'll have a serenade all by ourselves; what do you say to that?"

"D' yer mane it?" she demanded, half breathless in her earnestness.

He nodded.

Aileen clapped her hands and began to dance; then she stopped suddenly
to say: "I ain't going to dance for yer now; but I will sometime," she
added graciously. "I've