flake lace. Everywhere mirrored walls caught the light
and reflected the potted ferns and palms so that David looked down
endless vistas of loveliness that seemed for all the world like the
long sunflecked aisles beneath the tall pines of his mountain home.

The music that David had heard at first had long since stopped; but
David had not noticed that. He stood now in the center of the room,
awed, and trembling, but enraptured. Then from somewhere came a
voice--a voice so cold that it sounded as if it had swept across a
field of ice.

"Well, boy, when you have quite finished your inspection, perhaps you
will tell me to what I am indebted for THIS visit," it said.

David turned abruptly.

"O Lady of the Roses, why didn't you tell me it was like this--in
here?" he breathed.

"Well, really," murmured the lady in the doorway, stiffly, "it had not
occurred to me that that was hardly--necessary."

"But it was!--don't you see? This is new, all new. I never saw anything
like it before; and I do so love new things. It gives me something new
to play; don't you understand?"

"New--to play?"

"Yes--on my violin," explained David, a little breathlessly, softly
testing his violin. "There's always something new in this, you know,"
he hurried on, as he tightened one of the strings, "when there's
anything new outside. Now, listen! You see I don't know myself just how
it's going to sound, and I'm always so anxious to find out." And with a
joyously rapt face he began to play.

"But, see here, boy,--you mustn't! You--" The words died on her lips;
and, to her unbounded amazement, Miss Barbara Holbrook, who had
intended peremptorily to send this persistent little tramp boy about
his business, found herself listening to a melody so compelling in its
sonorous beauty that she was left almost speechless at its close. It
was the boy who spoke.

"There, I told you my violin would know what to say!"

"'What to say'!--well, that's more than I do" laughed Miss Holbrook, a
little hysterically. "Boy, come here and tell me who you are." And she
led the way to a low divan that stood near a harp at the far end of the
room.

It was the same story, told as David had told it to Jack and Jill a few
days before, only this time David's eyes were roving admiringly all
about the room, resting oftenest on the harp so near him.

"Did that make the music that I heard?" he asked eagerly, as soon as
Miss Holbrook's questions gave him opportunity. "It'