"Why, really, General, Isabel hasn't had a cha--Oh! ho, ho! I oughtn't
to have said that!" Mrs. Morris had a killing dimple, but never used it.

"I suppose--of course"--said the General, "she will say
it's--eh--Arthur?"

"Now you're making me tell," she laughed, "and I mustn't! General,
Godfrey seems to be going."

In fact, Godfrey was shaking hands with Ruth and Leonard. Now he took
the hands of Arthur and Isabel together, and Mrs. Morris laughed more
sweetly and with more oh's and ho's than ever; for Isabel sedately
kissed Arthur's brother.

Ruth made signs to her father, who answered them in kind. "What does she
say, Mrs. Morris? Can you hear?"

"She says they're singing 'your hymn' down in a church under the hill."

"Ah yes." He beamed and nodded to Ruth; but when Mrs. Morris once more
laughed, his brow clouded a trifle. "Your daughter, Mrs. Morris"--

The lady broke in with a note of bright surprise, rose, and took an
unconscious step forward. The five young friends were advancing in a
compact cluster, with measured pace. Ruth and Isabel, in front abreast,
and making happy show of the hawthorn sprays, were just enough apart to
conceal, except for their superior height, the three lovers, and in
lowered tones, but with kindling eyes, the five, incited by Ruth, were
singing the song they had caught up from the valley,--the old man's
favorite from the days of his own song-time. The General got himself
hurriedly to his feet; the shade passed from his brow. The group came
close; he stepped out, and Isabel, meeting him, laid her two hands in
his, while the halting cluster ceased their song suspensively on a line
that pledged loves and friendships too ethereal to clash.

"Isabel,"--he turned up a broadened palm,--"here's my amen to that line;
where's yours?"

With blushing alacrity she laid her hand on his.

"Arthur!" he called, and the lively lover added his to the two. "Now,
Ruth!"

"Father!" laughed the daughter, "isn't this rather youngish?" But she
laid her hand promptly upon Arthur's, and the lines of the General's
face deepened playfully, and Mrs. Morris's dimple did the same, as
Godfrey thrust his hand in upon Ruth's, unasked. The matron laughed very
tenderly on the key of O while she added her hand, and received
Leonard's heavy palm above it. Then Arthur clapped a second hand upon
Leonard's, and Leonard was about to lay a second quietly upon Arthur's,
when Isabel, rose-red from brow to throat, gayly b