our judgment,
and I will decline the invitation."

"I think you are right," Mrs. Carey answered, wondering if the man would
ever see his duty with his own eyes, or whether he had deliberately
blinded himself for life.

XXXV

THE CRIMSON RAMBLER

While Mrs. Carey was talking with Mr. Lord, Nancy skimmed across the
barn floor intent on some suddenly remembered duty, went out into the
garden, and met face to face a strange young man standing by the rose
trellis and looking in at the dance through the open door.

He had on a conventional black dinner-coat, something never seen in
Beulah, and wore a soft travelling cap. At first Nancy thought he was a
friend of the visiting fiddler, but a closer look at his merry dark eyes
gave her the feeling that she had seen him before, or somebody very like
him. He did not wait for her to speak, but taking off his cap, put out
his hand and said: "By your resemblance to a photograph in my possession
I think you are the girl who planted the crimson rambler."

"Are you 'my son Tom'?" asked Nancy, open astonishment in her tone. "I
mean my Mr. Hamilton's son Tom?"

"I am _my_ Mr. Hamilton's son Tom; or shall we say _our_ Mr. Hamilton's?
Do two 'mys' make one 'our'?"

"Upon my word, wonders will never cease!" exclaimed Nancy. "The Admiral
said you were in Boston, but he never told us you would visit Beulah
so soon!"

"No, I wanted it to be a secret. I wanted to appear when the ball was at
its height; the ghost of the old regime confronting the new, so
to speak."

"Beulah will soon be a summer resort; everybody seems to be coming
here."

"It's partly your fault, isn't it?"

"Why, pray?"

"'The Water Babies' is one of my favorite books, and I know all about
Mother Carey's chickens. They go out over the seas and show good birds
the way home."

"Are _you_ a good bird?" asked Nancy saucily.

"I'm _home_, at all events!" said Tom with an emphasis that made Nancy
shiver lest the young man had come to Beulah with a view of taking up
his residence in the paternal mansion.

The two young people sat down on the piazza steps while the music of
The Sultan's Polka floated out of the barn door. Old Mrs. Jenks was
dancing with Peter, her eighty-year-old steps as fleet as his, her white
side-curls bobbing to the tune. Her withered hands clasped his dimpled
ones and the two seemed to be of the same age, for in the atmosphere of
laughter and goodwill there would have been no place fo