nd Lloyd had given up their rooms to the new guests, and
moved back into the sewing-room together. Now in order not to awaken
Lloyd she tiptoed out to the little vine-covered balcony, through the
window that opened into it from the sewing-room. She was in her
nightgown, for she could not wait to dress, when she was so eager to
find out what kind of a day Eugenia was to have for her wedding.

Not a cloud was in sight. It was as perfect as only a June morning can
be, in Kentucky. The fresh smell of dewy roses and new-mown grass
mingled with the pungent smoke of the wood fire, just beginning to curl
up in blue rings from the kitchen chimney. Soft twitterings and jubilant
bird-calls followed the flash of wings from tree to tree. She peeped
out between the thick mass of wistaria vines, across the grassy court,
formed by the two rear wings of the house, to another balcony opposite
the one in which she stood. It opened off Eugenia's room, and was almost
hidden by a climbing rose, which made a perfect bride's bower, with its
gorgeous full-blown Gloire Dijon roses.

Stray rhymes and words suggestive of music and color and the morning's
glory began to flit through her mind as she stood there, as if a little
poem were about to start to life with a happy fluttering of wings; a
madrigal of June. But in a few moments she slipped back into the house
through the window, put on her kimono and slippers, and gathering up her
journal in one hand and pen and ink with the other, she stole back to
the balcony again. The seamstress had left her sewing-chair out there
the afternoon she finished Mary's dress, and it still stood there, with
the lap-board beside it. Taking the board on her knees, and opening her
journal upon it, Betty perched her ink-bottle on the balcony railing and
began to write. She knew there would be no time later in the day for her
to bring her record up-to-date, and she did not want to let the
happenings pile up unrecorded. She was afraid she might leave out
something she wanted to include, and she had found that the trivial
conversations and the trifles she noted were often the things which
recalled a scene most vividly, and almost made it seem to live again.
She began her narrative just where she had left off, so that it made a
continuous story.

"We didn't settle down to anything yesterday morning. Phil went to town
with Papa Jack directly after breakfast, and we girls just strolled up
and down the avenue and talked.