wore, and what
Freddie Kollander who waited on them, and also went to high school, did
when he saw her, and how Mr. Fenn acted when Miss Mueller got the big
platter of oysters, and what olives tasted like and if anything had been
cooked in the Peerless Cooker that father had just sold Mr. Paxton and
in general why the spirit of mortal should be proud.

But Miss Mueller entertained no such thoughts. She was treading upon the
air of some elysium, and she took and held Mr. Fenn's arm with an
unnecessary tightness and began humming the tune that told of the girl
who dreamed she dwelt in marble halls; and then, as they left the thick
of the town and were walking along the board sidewalks that lead to Elm
Crest on Elm Street, they all fell to singing that tune; and as one good
tune deserved another, and as they were going to practice the funeral
music that evening, they sang other tunes of a highly secular nature
that need not be enumerated here. And as Miss Mueller had a substantial
dinner folded snugly within her, and the ambition of her life was
looming but a few blocks ahead of her, she walked closer to Mr. Fenn,
county attorney in and for Greeley county, than was really necessary. So
when Mr. Brotherton walked alongside with the eldest Miss Morton
stumbling intermittently over the edge of the sidewalk and walking in
the dry weeds beside it, Miss Mueller put some feeling into her singing
voice and they struck what Mr. Brotherton was pleased to call a
barbershop chord, and held it to his delight. And the frosty air rang
with their voices, and the rich tremulous voice of the young woman
thrilled with passion too deep for words. So deep was it that it might
have stirred the hovering soul of the dead whose dirges they were to
sing and brought back to him the time when he too had thrilled with
youth and its inexpressible joy.

Up the hill they go, arm in arm, with fondling voices uttering the
unutterable. And now they turn into a long, broad avenue of elms, of
high, plumey elms trimmed and tended, mulched and cultivated for nearly
twenty years, the apple of one man's eye; great elms set in blue grass,
branching only at the tops, elms that stand in a grove around an
irregular house, elms that shade a broad stone walk leading up to a
wide, hospitable door. The young people ring. There is a stirring in the
house, Margaret Mueller's heart is a-flutter--and the eldest Miss Morton
wonders whether Laura or the hired girl will open