owing the stems! Oh, Cleena, I wonder if I can't reach them."

"Truth, it's meself's willin' you should try. Belike I'd be handier at
the pullin' them down nor the puttin' them up."

With head erect she descended from the ladder, and stood, arms akimbo,
regarding the results of her labor. Even to her it suggested something
not "artistic," and at Fairacres anything inartistic was duly frowned
upon.

"Faith, it's not the way the master would do it, I see that, but--"

Before either she could finish her sentence or Amy mount the ladder,
Fayette had run to its top and stood there rapidly pulling from the wall
the branches Cleena had arranged. Thrusting all but one between his
knees, he fastened that over the window-frame so deftly and charmingly
that Amy clapped her hands in delight.

"Oh, that's lovely! Try another--and another!"

He obeyed. His vacant face flushed with a glow of enthusiasm equalling,
if not exceeding her own, and even Cleena spent some moments of her
rarely wasted time in watching him.

Her own face had again become a "study," yet of a sort to provoke a
smile, as her gaze roved from his handiwork, over the length of his
ungainly person, to rest upon his bare and not too cleanly feet; then
travelled slowly upward again, trying to settle once for all his
rightful position in the social scale. Her thought might have been thus
expressed:--

"His foot's heathen. His head's the same. His clothes--they're the
heathenest of all. I'd disdain 'em. But, arrah musha! The hand of him!
The master himself couldn't better them fixin's."

Then she hastened to her kitchen, and soon the appetizing odor of a
well-cooked meal was in their nostrils, and the two young decorators
realized that they were very hungry.

"There, that will do. It is perfect. Thank you ever and ever so much,
Fayette."

"Shucks!"

"Now I'll light the candles. I always do when the people are coming home
from town. They go there quite often; at least father does, though
mother hasn't been before in months. The candles are terrible
extravagance, Cleena says, but they're so pretty."

Fayette carried away the step-ladder, then returned to watch Amy as she
set the old-fashioned candelabra upon the already daintily spread table.
She had bordered the white cloth with some of the most dazzling-hued
leaves, and when the wax tapers threw their soft radiance over the whole
charming interior, poor Fayette felt his weak head grow dizzy and
confused