while. It's going to be just--splend-umphant!"

"If you don't go and talk about it," said Rosamond. "We _must_ keep
the new of it to ourselves."

"As if I needed!" cried Barbara, indignantly. "When I hushed up Harry
Goldthwaite, and went round all the rest of the evening without doing
anything but just give you that awful little pinch!"

"That was bad enough," said Rosamond, quietly; she never got cross or
inelegantly excited about anything. "But I _do_ think the girls will
like it. And we might have tea out on the broad piazza."

"That is bare floor too," said Barbara, mischievously.

Now, our dining-room had not yet even the English drugget. The dark
new boards would do for summer weather, mother said. "If it had been
real oak, polished!" Rosamond thought. "But hard-pine was kitcheny."

Ruth went to bed with the rest of her thinking and the brook-music
flittering in her brain.

Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks had talked behind her with Jeannie Hadden about
her playing. It was not the compliment that excited her so, although
they said her touch and expression were wonderful, and that her
fingers were like little flying magnets, that couldn't miss the right
points. Jeannie Hadden said she liked to _see_ Ruth Holabird play, as
well as she did to hear her.

But it was Mrs. Marchbanks's saying that she would give almost
anything to have Lily taught such a style; she hardly knew what she
should do with her; there was no good teacher in the town who gave
lessons at the houses, and Lily was not strong enough to go regularly
to Mr. Viertelnote. Besides, she had picked up a story of his being
cross, and rapping somebody's fingers, and Lily was very shy and
sensitive. She never did herself any justice if she began to be
afraid.

Jeannie Hadden said it was just her mother's trouble about Reba,
except that Reba was strong enough; only that Mrs. Hadden preferred a
teacher to come to the house.

"A good young-lady teacher, to give beginners a desirable style from
the very first, is exceedingly needed since Miss Robbyns went away,"
said Mrs. Marchbanks, to whom just then her sister came and said
something, and drew her off.

Ruth's fingers flew over the keys; and it must have been magnetism
that guided them, for in her brain quite other quick notes were
struck, and ringing out a busy chime of their own.

"If I only could!" she was saying to herself. "If they really would
have me, and they would let me at home. Then I could go to