, professed ignorance.

"Kirkleigh Sturgis," said the owner of the musical instrument,
"Winterbottom Road."

"Mister Sturgis," said the auctioneer, while Ben scribbled. "Step right
up, young man. Give Ben your money and put your pianner in your pocket.
Now folks, the next article--"

Kirk and Felicia, not to speak of the organ, two chairs, a wash-basin, a
frying-pan, two boxes of candles, a good mop, and a pot of soft soap,
were all carted home by the invaluable Hop. They met Ken, in from his
second trip, in the middle of Winterbottom Hill, and they gave him a
lift.

"Oh, if you knew what you're sitting on!" Phil chuckled.

"Good heavens! Will it go off?" cried Ken, squirming around to look down
at his seat. "I thought it was a chest, or something."

"It's--a melodeon!" Phil said weakly.

"A melodeon! Oh, ye gods and little fishes!" shouted Ken. "Oh, my
prophetic soul!" and he laughed all the way to Applegate Farm.

But while Felicia was clattering pans in the kitchen, and Ken went
whistling through the orchard twilight to the well, the purchaser of the
organ felt his way to it, not quite sure, yet, of its place by the
window. He sat down in front of it, and pressed the stiff old pedals.
His careful fingers found a chord, and the yellow notes responded with
their sweet, thin cadence--the _vox humana_ stop was out. He pulled, by
chance, the diapason, and filled the room with deep, shaken notes. Half
frightened at the magic possibilities, he slipped from the chair and ran
out into the young May night, to whisper to it something of the love and
wonder that the Maestro's music was stirring in him. Here in the twilit
dooryard he was found by his brother, who gave him the hand unoccupied
by the bucket and led him in to the good, wholesome commonplaces of
hearth-fire and supper and the jolliest of jokes and laughter.

CHAPTER IX

FAME COMES COURTING

At first, each day in the old house had been an adventure. That could
not last, for even the most exciting surroundings become familiar when
they are lived in day after day. Still, there are people who think every
dawn the beginning of a new adventure, and Felicia, in spite of pots and
pans, was rather of this opinion.

It was, for instance, a real epoch in her life when the great old
rose-bush below the living-room windows budded and then bloomed. She had
watched it anxiously for weeks, and tended it as it had not been tended
for many years. It bloomed sudd