to which all the young people of Four Winds and
Glen St. Mary and over-harbour had been invited. As Jem's boat swung in
below the lighthouse Rilla desperately snatched off her shoes and
donned her silver slippers behind Miss Oliver's screening back. A
glance had told her that the rock-cut steps climbing up to the light
were lined with boys, and lighted by Chinese lanterns, and she was
determined she would not walk up those steps in the heavy shoes her
mother had insisted on her wearing for the road. The slippers pinched
abominably, but nobody would have suspected it as Rilla tripped
smilingly up the steps, her soft dark eyes glowing and questioning, her
colour deepening richly on her round, creamy cheeks. The very minute
she reached the top of the steps an over-harbour boy asked her to dance
and the next moment they were in the pavilion that had been built
seaward of the lighthouse for dances. It was a delightful spot, roofed
over with fir-boughs and hung with lanterns. Beyond was the sea in a
radiance that glowed and shimmered, to the left the moonlit crests and
hollows of the sand-dunes, to the right the rocky shore with its inky
shadows and its crystalline coves. Rilla and her partner swung in among
the dancers; she drew a long breath of delight; what witching music Ned
Burr of the Upper Glen was coaxing from his fiddle--it was really like
the magical pipes of the old tale which compelled all who heard them to
dance. How cool and fresh the gulf breeze blew; how white and wonderful
the moonlight was over everything! This was life--enchanting life.
Rilla felt as if her feet and her soul both had wings.

CHAPTER IV

THE PIPER PIPES

Rilla's first party was a triumph--or so it seemed at first. She had so
many partners that she had to split her dances. Her silver slippers
seemed verily to dance of themselves and though they continued to pinch
her toes and blister her heels that did not interfere with her
enjoyment in the least. Ethel Reese gave her a bad ten minutes by
beckoning her mysteriously out of the pavilion and whispering, with a
Reese-like smirk, that her dress gaped behind and that there was a
stain on the flounce. Rilla rushed miserably to the room in the
lighthouse which was fitted up for a temporary ladies' dressing-room,
and discovered that the stain was merely a tiny grass smear and that
the gap was equally tiny where a hook had pulled loose. Irene Howard
fastened it up for her and gave her some over