s of yours are like--a clump of hepaticas that you
find in the woods in spring."

* * * * *

That evening the Gay Lady had left us, as she sometimes does, and gone
in to play soft, old-time melodies on my piano, while the rest of us sat
silently listening. The men know well enough that it is useless to
follow her in when she goes to play in the twilight--if they did she
would send them back again, or stop playing. And as it is worth much to
hear her play when she has a certain mood upon her, nobody does anything
to break the spell. Sometimes the listening grows almost painful, but
before we are quite overwrought she comes back and makes us gay again.

"When I was a boy," said the Skeptic, very softly to me, after the music
stopped, "I used to pick out men to admire and follow about, and
consume myself with wishing that some day I could be like them. How
could a girl like that one we've had here to-day look at our Gay Lady
and not want to copy her to the last hair on her head?"

"There are some things which can't be copied," I returned. "She is one
of them."

The Skeptic gave me a grateful glance. "You never said a truer thing
than that," said he.

Perceiving that he was in a sentimental mood, and that the Gay Lady had
stopped playing and was coming out again upon the porch, I turned my
attention to the Philosopher. In spite of the music he seemed not in a
sentimental mood.

"You have a lot of girl company, first and last, don't you?" he queried,
when he and I had agreed upon the beauty of the night.

"It happens so, for some reason," I admitted.

He shook his head regretfully. "If I thought you were going to have
anything more like that to-day soon, I should take to the woods,"
said he.

V

AZALEA

It all depends upon a consciousness of values, a sense of proportion.
--_Arthur Christopher Benson._

"The heavens have fallen!" I announced in the doorway of the Gay Lady's
room. "Cook is ill--I had the doctor for her in the night. And my little
waitress went home just yesterday to her sister's wedding."

"And breakfast to get," responded the Gay Lady, arriving instantly at
the point, as she always does. She had been dressing leisurely. Now she
made all speed and instead of white linen she slipped into a
blue-and-white-checked gingham. "Don't worry--I'll be down in three
minutes," she assured me cheerily.

I found Lad building the kitchen fire--in the country