, in the very
frame in which his imagination had pictured her.

"Have the girls got home?" asked the old man, rousing himself, and going
towards the door.--"Come in, girls. I half think we have got your great
musician here. At any rate, he can work some magic, and has pulled out of
the old piano all the music ever your mother and I have listened to all
our life long.--My girls could not have hired me," he continued to Arnold,
"to go to one of your new-fangled concerts; but whether it is because the
little piano is so old, or because you know all that old music, you have
brought it all back as though the world were beginning again.--We must not
let him go from here to-night," he said to his wife and children. And when
he found that Laura had met the musician in New York, his urgencies upon
Arnold to stay were peremptory and unanswerable.

As Laura's younger sister, Clara, closed her eyes that night, she said,--

"Mamma and papa think his music sounded of home and old times. How did it
sound to you, Laura?"

Laura put her hands over her closed eyes in the dark, and said,
dreamily,--"It sounded to me like love-songs, sung by such a tender voice,
out in the woods, somewhere, where there were pine-trees and a brook."

"It seemed to me like butterflies," said Clara. She did not explain what
she meant.

The next morning, as it had been arranged in sisterly council, Laura was
to entertain the stranger while Clara made the preparations for breakfast.
Laura found him in the porch, already rejoicing in the morning view. But,
after the first greeting, she found talking with him difficult. They fell
into a silence; and to escape from it Laura finally ran into the kitchen,
blue muslin and all. She pushed Clara away from the fireplace.

"You must let me help," she said, and moved pots, pans, and kettles.

"Another stick of wood would make this water boil," she went on.

"Where shall I find it?" said a voice behind her; and Arnold directly
answered his own question with his ready help.

There followed great bustling, laughter, help, and interruption to work.
When Mrs. Ashton came down, she found the breakfast-table in its wonted
place in the broad kitchen, instead of being laid in the back-parlor, as
was the custom when there were guests in the house. It was a very happy
breakfast; the door opened wide upon the green behind the house, and the
September morning air brought in an appetite for the generously laden
table.

Afte