t."

"That's it. So do I. Nothing like a nice sacred piece," Cornish
declared.

Bobby Larkin, at the end of the piano, looked directly into Di's face.

"Give _me_ ragtime," he said now, with the effect of bursting out of
somewhere. "Don't you like ragtime?" he put it to her directly.

Di's eyes danced into his, they sparkled for him, her smile was a smile
for him alone, all their store of common memories was in their look.

"Let's try 'My Rock, My Refuge,'" Cornish suggested. "That's got up real
attractive."

Di's profile again, and her pleased voice saying that this was the very
one she had been hoping to hear him sing.

They gathered for "My Rock, My Refuge."

"Oh," cried Ina, at the conclusion of this number, "I'm having such a
perfectly beautiful time. Isn't everybody?" everybody's hostess put it.

"Lulu is," said Dwight, and added softly to Lulu: "She don't have to
hear herself sing."

It was incredible. He was like a bad boy with a frog. About that
photograph of Ninian he found a dozen ways to torture her, called
attention to it, showed it to Cornish, set it on the piano facing them
all. Everybody must have understood--excepting the Plows. These two
gentle souls sang placidly through the Album of Old Favourites, and at
the melodies smiled happily upon each other with an air from another
world. Always it was as if the Plows walked some fair, inter-penetrating
plane, from which they looked out as do other things not quite of
earth, say, flowers and fire and music.

Strolling home that night, the Plows were overtaken by some one who ran
badly, and as if she were unaccustomed to running.

"Mis' Plow, Mis' Plow!" this one called, and Lulu stood beside them.

"Say!" she said. "Do you know of any job that I could get me? I mean
that I'd know how to do? A job for money.... I mean a job...."

She burst into passionate crying. They drew her home with them.

* * * * *

Lying awake sometime after midnight, Lulu heard the telephone ring. She
heard Dwight's concerned "Is that so?" And his cheerful "Be right
there."

Grandma Gates was sick, she heard him tell Ina. In a few moments he ran
down the stairs. Next day they told how Dwight had sat for hours that
night, holding Grandma Gates so that her back would rest easily and she
could fight for her faint breath. The kind fellow had only about two
hours of sleep the whole night long.

Next day there came a message from that woman