auty.

The fountain into which, only that morning, he had thrust his hot little
face for a drink, now seemed bewitched. It was no longer a flow of
sparkling water, but of splashing rainbows. From palest green to ruby
red, from amethyst to amber it paled and deepened and glowed.

All the evening he moved about like one in a dream. The tableaux with
their shifting scenes of knights and ladies and marble statuary were
burned on his memory as heavenly visions. He knew nothing of the tinsel
and flour and red lights which produced the effect. He stood about as
Miss Hallie told him: he held a horse in one tableau, and posed as a
bronze statue in another. Then he went back to the fountain, and sat
dreamily watching it, while the violins played again,--in the long
parlors this time, where the dancing had begun.

Raleigh Stanford, still in his cavalier costume, and with Miss Sally Lou
on his arm, spied him as they passed by. "Oh, there's that funny little
fellow that was here this morning!" she said. "We tried to make him
talk, but he just kept his head on one side, and was too embarrassed to
say anything."

"Hey, Sambo," called the young man suddenly in his ear. "What do you
know?"

John Jay gave a start, and looked up at the amused faces above him. He
took the question seriously, and thought he must really tell what he
knew; but just at that moment he could remember only one thing in all
the wide world. Every other bit of information seemed to desert him. So
he stammered, "I--I know M--Miss Hallie, she's nineteen this Satiddy,
an' I'll be nine next Satiddy."

Miss Sally Lou laughed so gaily that her young cavalier made another
effort to please her.

"Is that so!" he exclaimed, as if surprised. "It's a mighty lucky thing
you told me that, now, or I never would have thought to bring you
anything. You didn't know that I am a sort of birthday Santa Claus, did
you? Just look out for me next Saturday. If I'm not there by
breakfast-time, wait till noon, and if I don't get there by that time
it'll be because something has happened; anyway, somebody'll be prancing
along about sundown."

"Oh, come along, Raleigh," said Miss Sally Lou, moving off toward the
house. "You're such a tease."

John Jay, sitting beside that wonderful fountain and surrounded by so
many strange, beautiful things, did not think it at all queer that such
an unheard-of person as a birthday Santa Claus should suddenly step out
from the midst of the enchant