rsh, with
your exhaustive inquiries into the habits and manners of Vermont
mountaineers, your data won't be complete unless you've seen Nelly
Powers' night-blooming cereus in its one hour of glory. Seriously, I
assure you, you won't encounter anything like it, anywhere else."

As Marsh looked at her, she noted with an inward amusement that her
words had lighted a smouldering glow of carefully repressed exasperation
in his eyes. It made her feel quite gay and young to be teasing somebody
again. She was only paying him back in his own coin. He himself was
always telling everybody about his deep interest in the curious quaint
ways of these mountaineers. And if he didn't have a deep interest in
their curious quaint ways, what else could he give as a reason for
staying on in the valley?

The men turned away to get their hats. She settled the folds of her
heavy black silk mantilla more closely about her head, glancing at
herself in the mirror. She smiled back with sympathy at the smiling face
she saw there. It was not so often since the war that she saw her own
face lighted with mirth.

Gravely, something deep on the edge of the unconscious called up to her,
"You are talking and feeling like a coquette."

She was indignant at this, up in arms to defend human freedom. "Oh, what
a hateful, little-villagey, prudish, nasty-minded idea!" she cried to
herself. "Who would have thought that narrowness and priggishness could
rub off on a person's mind like that! Mrs. Bayweather could have thought
that! Mercy! As if one civilized being can't indulge in a light touch or
two in human intercourse with another!"

The two men were ready now and all the party of six jostled each other
cheerfully as they went out of the front door. Paul had secured the hand
of old Mr. Welles and led him along with an air of proprietary
affection.

"Don't you turn out the lamp, or lock the door, or _any_thing?" asked
the old man, now.

"Oh no, we won't be gone long. It's not more than half a mile to the
Powers'. There's not a soul in the valley who would think of going in
and rummaging . . . let alone taking anything. And we never have tramps.
We are too far from the railroad," said Marise.

"_Well!_" exclaimed the other, looking back as they went down the path,
"it certainly looks queer to me, the door standing open into this black
night, and the light shining in that empty room."

Elly looked back too. She slipped her hand out of her mother's and