rying another
of her intended guests with her intelligence. "Really--yes,
presently, thank you," was the absent answer. "There is some
delightful mystery in there."

Cecil found her attempts were vain, and was next asked, as one of
the household, what delicious secret was going on there; and as it
hurt her feelings to be left out, she pressed into the conservatory,
with some vague intention of ordering Anne, if not Rosamond, to
release her grown-up audience, and confine their entertainment to
the children; but she found herself at once caught by the hand by a
turbaned figure like a prince in the Arabian Nights, who, with a low
salaam, waved her on.

"No, thank you. I'm looking for--"

But retreat was impossible, for many were crowding up in eager
curiosity; moreover, a muslin bandage descended-on her eyes.
"Don't!" she expostulated; "I'm not at play--I'm--" but her words
were lost.

"Hush! the Peri's cave is near,
No one enters scatheless here;
Lightly tread and lowly bend,
Win the Peri for your friend,"

sung a voice to the mysterious piano accompaniment; and Cecil found
both hands taken, and was forced to move on, as she guessed the
length of the conservatory, amid sounds of suppressed laughter that
exceedingly annoyed her, till there was a pause and repetition of
the two last lines with an attempt to make her obey them. She was
too impatient and angry to perceive that it would have been much
better taste to enter into the humour of the thing; and she only
said with all her peculiar cold petulance, just like sleet, "Let me
go, if you please; I am engaged. I am waited for."

"Peri gracious,
She's contumacious;
Behold, every hair shall bristle
When she hears the magic whistle!"

and a whistle, sharp, long, and loud, sounded behind her, amid peals
of merriment. She turned sharply round, but still the whistle was
behind her, and rang out again and again, till she was half
deafened, and wholly irate; while the repetition of

"Bend, bend, lowly bend,
Win the Peri for your friend,"

forced on her the conviction that on no other condition should she
be set free, though the recognition of Terry's voice made the
command doubly unpalatable, and as she made the stiffest and most
reluctant of courtesies, a voice said,

"Homage done, you may be
Of this merry company;"

and with a last blast of the whistle the bandage was removed, and
she found herself in the midst of a half circle of laughing children
an