ldn't be
half as pretty with the approved Gibson girl kind, no matter how perfect
it was."

"And her complexion is so lovely," Emily resumed, enthusiastically. "And
her eyes are a jolly, laughing kind of brown, with an amber sparkle in
them, except when she gets into one of her intense, serious moods. Then
they are almost black, they're so deep and velvety. She's never twice in
the same mood. Oh! There she comes now."

A side door opened, and a slim little thing all in white, with a violin
under her arm and a distracted pucker on her face, hurried up to the
piano. Nervously feeling her belt to make sure that she was presentable
before turning her back on the audience, she whispered to the girl who
was to play her accompaniments, and began tuning the violin. Then,
tucking it under her chin as if she loved it, she listened an instant to
the piano prelude, and drew her bow softly across the strings.

"Good!" whispered Emily. "It's that Mexican swallow song. She always
has such a rapt expression on her face when she plays that. She makes me
think of St. Cecilia. She's so earnest in all she does. If it's no more
than making fudge, she throws her whole soul into it, just that way.
She's as intense as if the fate of a nation depended on whatever she
happens to be doing."

As Lloyd joined loudly in the applause which followed the performance,
another girl came up to claim her attention. It was Myra Carr, the
senior who had taken Allison under her wing.

"Doesn't Gay play splendidly?" she exclaimed, not knowing that she had
been the previous topic of conversation. "We think she's a genius. She
improvises little things sometimes in the twilight that are so sweet and
sad they make you cry. Then she's unconventional enough to be a genius.
She's always shocking people without meaning to, and so careless, she'd
lose her head if nature hadn't attended to the fastenings.

"We all love her dearly, but we vowed the last time we went sightseeing
that she should never go with us again unless she let us tie her up in a
bag, so that nothing could drop out by the way. First she lost her hat.
It blew off the trolley-car, one of those 'seeing Washington' affairs,
you know. She had to go bareheaded all the rest of the way. Then she
lost her pocketbook, and such a time as we had hunting that. The time
before, she lost a locket that had been a family heirloom, and we missed
our train and got caught in a shower looking for it."

"Where does