told it
minutely for Adelle's benefit, offering amusing explanations of its
mythological mysteries.

"But how did you happen to go to the opera?" Adelle asked.

"Well," he said in vague diffidence, "I was feeling pretty good by that
time, and I seen the poster. I had the price--why shouldn't I go?" he
demanded brusquely; and with another sardonic laugh the real motive came
out,--"I wanted to see what you folks who go to the opery see--how you
enjoy yourselves. Well, the opery ain't so bad--it ain't one bit bad,"
and he attempted to hum the Rheingold music. "I believe I'll go to the
opery again when I'm on the loose and don't know any better way to blow
my money. I like music," he added inconsequentially. "Mother used to
sing sometimes."

This was as far as they got conversationally that day. Something
interrupted Adelle in the midst of the musical discussion and she did
not have a chance to return to the wall. But she had almost daily
opportunity for talk with the young mason in the succeeding weeks, for
after his return from his spree, he worked steadily on his job every
day. He was one of the very few American-born workmen employed at
Highcourt, and after their misunderstanding and subsequent agreement,
Adelle felt better acquainted with him than with the others. He taught
her to handle the trowel and to lay stone. After a few attempts, she
managed quite well and found a curious pleasure in the manual labor of
fitting stone to stone and properly bedding the whole in cement. She
learned to select the right pieces with a rapid glance and to chip an
obtrusive corner or face a rock with a few taps of the heavy hammer. It
gave her a pleasure akin to her experiments in jewelry, and it must be
said the results were better. She used to show her visitors proudly the
bit of wall she had laid up herself under the young mason's direction
and assert that, instead of bookbinding or jewelry or other ladylike
occupations, she meant to set up stone walls about Highcourt for her
recreation. The Bellevue people considered her whim a harmless bit of
eccentricity in the young mistress of Highcourt, and she was the object
of many a good-humored joke about her new method of "beating the
unions." Little did any of these pleasure-loving rich folk suspect where
Adelle's instinct for manual labor came from, how natural it was for her
to work at coarse tasks with her large, shapely hands.

* * * * *

She need