ing to mine through the glass. I knew it. I felt it. Indeed he won't
be the first of his noble race that has lost heart and soul to a country
girl.

The Prince sat down, and when there was a lull in the music, clapped his
hands with joy. Oh, my sisters! it is something to have given such
supreme pleasure to the Grand Ducal soul.

He looked at the play; I looked too. Souls in sympathy have but one
thought. I pitied that poor girl-boy with all my heart--my own happiness
made me compassionate. How she suffered when that woman with the yellow
skirts and the young fellow in boots were singing love to each other!
Once she got wild, and dressed herself in a pink silk, and--well, she
made one of those toilets that Cousin E. E. understands so well. I was
sorry to see her exposing one or two little things that should be a
secret with the sex. But she did, and the yellow lady caught her at it,
and sung awfully provoking things at her.

Well, she just tore off the dress, scattered the lace trimmings about,
put on her old duds, and ran away.

Then the house got on fire: the whole swarm of people come out
helter-skelter, singing to the flames that didn't mind the music more
than if it had been buckets full of water. Firemen came running with
ladders that nobody climbed, and pails of water, that the firemen
carried round and round, in and out, like crazy creatures. I am sure I
saw one fellow, with a white pail, pitch through the same window into
the red-hot flames fifty times. The poor girl-boy, being desperate, just
pitched in, determined to burn herself, while the woman in yellow and
the man in boots looked on.

This went right to the cruel man's heart; he jumped in after her,
carried her away from the devouring flames, and fell in love with her
like a man. Of course, being a decent kind of a fellow, he couldn't keep
on singing out his love to both girls at once with enthusiasm, and began
to neglect the yellow girl in a way that brought tears into her voice
whenever she came pleading to him under the window--which she did, not
having the pride of all the Frost family in her veins.

Of course this did no good; men never come back to women that whine. The
girl--for she had given up boys' clothes--had got him safe; he didn't
care a chestnut-burr for all the other's singing, but took to the little
vagabondess with all his heart and soul.

Now something else happened. The old man in gray got his mind again and
turned out to be Mi