dragged from its familiar
surroundings to stand on the trampled grass, was a little, square,
weathered thing, which Felicia at first failed to recognize as the
inevitable melodeon. It lacked all the plush and gewgaws of the parlor
organ of commerce; such a modest, tiny gray box might easily have passed
for a kitchen chest.

Felicia pushed back the cover, and, pressing a pedal with one foot,
gave forth the chords of her favorite, "How should I your true love
know?" The organ had a rather sweet old tone, unlike the nasal and
somewhat sanctimonious drone of most melodeons, and Felicia, hungry for
the piano that had not been brought to Asquam, almost wished she could
buy it. She remembered Ken's prophecy--"you'll come home with a
melodeon"--and turned away, her cheeks all the pinker when she found the
frankly interested eyes of several bumpkins fixed upon her. But Kirk was
not so ready to leave the instrument.

"Why don't we get that, Phil?" he begged. "We _must_ have it; don't you
think so?"

"It will go for much more than we can afford," said Felicia. "And you
have the Maestro's piano. Listen! They're beginning to sell the things
around here."

"But _you_ haven't the Maestro's piano!" Kirk protested, clinging very
tightly to her hand in the midst of all this strange, pushing crowd.

The people were gathering at the sunny side of the house; the
auctioneer, at the window, was selling pots and candles and
pruning-shears and kitchen chairs. Felicia felt somehow curiously
aloof, and almost like an intruder, in this crowd of people, all of whom
had known each other for long years in Asquam. They shouted pleasantries
across intervening heads, and roared as one when somebody called
"'Lisha" bought an ancient stovepipe hat for five cents and clapped it
on his head, adding at least a foot to his already gaunt and towering
height. She felt, too, an odd sense of pathos at the sight of all these
little possessions--some of them heirlooms--being pulled from the old
homestead and flaunted before the world. She did not like to see two or
three old women fingering the fine quilts and saying they'd be a good
bargain, for "Maria Troop made every stitch on 'em herself, and she
allus was one to have lastin' things." Poor little Mrs. Troop was there,
tightly buttoned up in her "store clothes," running hither and thither,
and protesting to the auctioneer that the "sofy" was worth "twicet as
much's Sim Rathbone give for 't."

A fearful