body swung the back doors of the barn wide open. The fields, lately
mown, sloped gently up to a fringe of pines darkly green against the
sky. The cool night air stirred the elms, and the brilliant moon
appeared in the very centre of the doorway. The beauty of the whole
scene went to Tom Hamilton's head a little, but he kept his thoughts
steadily on the changes as Osh Popham called them.

To watch Nancy Carey dance The Tempest was a sight to stir the blood.
The two head couples joined hands and came down the length of the barn
four abreast; back they went in a whirl; then they balanced to the next
couple, then came four hands round and ladies' chain, and presently they
came down again flying, with another four behind them. The first four
were Nancy and Tom, Ralph Thurston and Kathleen, the last two among the
best dancers in Beulah; but while Kitty was slim and straight and
graceful as a young fawn, Nancy swept down the middle of the barn floor
like a flower borne by the breeze. She was Youth, Hope, Joy incarnate!
She had washed the dishes that night, would wash them again in the
morning, but what of that? What mattered it that the years just ahead
(for aught she knew to the contrary) were full of self-denial and
economy? Was she not seventeen? Anything was possible at seventeen! What
if the world was to be a work-a-day world? There was music and laughter
in it as well as work, and there was love in it, too, oceans of love, so
why not trip and be merry and guide one's young partner safely through
the difficult mazes of the dance and bring him out flushed and
triumphant, to receive mother's laughing compliments?

Everybody was dancing The Tempest in his or her own fashion, thought the
Admiral, looking on. Mrs. Popham was grave, even gloomy from the waist
up, but incredibly lively from the waist down, moving with the precision
of machinery, while her partner, a bricklayer from Beulah Centre,
engaged the attention of the entire company by his wonderful steps. She
was fully up to time too, you may be sure, as her rival, Mrs. Bill
Harmon, was opposite her in the set. Lallie Joy, clad in one of
Kathleen's dresses, her hair dressed by Julia, was a daily attendant at
the Vacation School, but five weeks of steady instruction had not
sufficed to make her sure of ladies' grand chain. Olive moved like a shy
little wild thing, with a bending head and a grace all her own, while
Gilbert had great ease and distinction.

There was a bri