"It isn't books, Horace," remarked Aunt Nettie, incomprehensibly. "It's that O'Neill girl."

"What's that O'Neill girl?" demanded Missy, in a low, suppressed voice.

"Well, if you ask me, her head's full of--"

But a swift gesture from mother brought Aunt Nettie to a sudden pause.

But Missy, suspecting an implied criticism of her friend, began with hauteur:

"I implore you to desist from making any insinuation against Tess O'Neill. I'm very proud to be epris with her!" (Missy made the climactic word rhyme with "kiss.")

There was a little hush after this outburst from the usually reserved Missy. Father and mother stared at her and then at each other. But Aunt Nettie couldn't refrain from a repet.i.tion of the climactic word;

"E-priss!" And she actually giggled!

At the sound, Missy felt herself growing "deathly mute, even to the lips", but she managed to maintain a mien of intense composure.

"What does that mean, Missy?" queried father.

He was regarding her kindly, with no hint of hidden amus.e.m.e.nt. Father was a tall, quiet and very wise man, and Missy had sometimes found it possible to talk with him about the unusual things that rose up to fascinate her. She didn't distrust him so much as most grown-ups.

So she smiled at him and said informatively:

"It means to be in intense sympathy with."

"Oh, I see. Did you find that in the French dictionary?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I see we'll all have to be taking up foreign languages if we're to have such an accomplished young lady in the house."

He smiled at her in a way that made her almost glad, for a moment, that he was her father instead of a Duke who might surround her with baronial magnificence. Mother, too, she couldn't help loving, though, in her neat, practical gingham dress, she was so unlike Lady Chetwoode, the mother in "Airy Fairy Lilian." Lady Chetwoode wore dainty caps, all white lace and delicate ribbon bows that matched in colour her trailing gown. Her small and tapering hands were covered with rings. She walked with a slow, rather stately step, and there was a benignity about her that went straight to the heart... Well, there was something about mother, too, that went straight to the heart. Missy wouldn't trade off her mother for the world.

But when, later, she wandered into the front parlour, she couldn't help wishing it were a "drawing-room." And when she moved on out to the side porch, she viewed with a certain discontent the peaceful scene before her. Usually she had loved the side porch at the sunset hour: the close fragrance of honeysuckles which screened one end, the stretch of slick green gra.s.s and the nasturtium bed aflame like an unstirring fire, the trees rustling softly in the evening breeze--yes, she loved it all for the very tranquillity, the poignant tranquillity of it.

But that was before she realized there were in the world vast swards that swept beyond pleasure-grounds (what WERE "pleasure-grounds"?), past laughing brooklets and gurgling streams, on to the Park where roamed herds of many-antlered deer and where mighty oaks flung their arms far and wide; while mayhap, on a topmost branch, a crow swayed and swung as the soft wind rushed by, making an inky blot upon the brilliant green, as if it were a patch upon the alabaster cheek of some court belle...

Oh, enchanting!

But there were no vast swards nor pleasure-grounds nor Parks of antlered deer in Cherryvale.

Then Poppylinda, the majestic black cat, trod up the steps of the porch and rubbed herself against her mistress's foot, as if saying, "Anyhow, I'm here!"

Missy reached down and lifted Poppy to her lap. She adored Poppy; but she couldn't help reflecting that a Skye terrier (though she had never seen one) was a more distinguished kind of pet than a black cat. A black cat was--well, bourgeois (the last rhyming with "boys"). Airy fairy Lilian's pet was a Skye. It was named Fifine, and was very frisky.

Lilian, as she sat exchanging sprightly badinage with her many admirers, was wont to sit with her hand perdu beneath the silky Fifine in her lap.

"No, no, Fifine! Down, sir!" murmured Missy absently.

Poppy, otherwise immobile, blinked upward an inquiring gaze.

"Naughty Fifine! You MUST not kiss my fingers, sir!"

Poppy blinked again. Who might this invisible Fifine be? Her mistress was conversing in a very strange manner; and the strangest part of it was that she was looking straight into Poppy's own eyes.

Poppy didn't know it, but her name was no longer Poppylinda. It was Fifine.

That night Missy went to bed in her own little room in Cherryvale; but, strange as it may seem to you, she spent the hours till waking far across the sea, in a manor-house in baronial England.

After that, for a considerable period, only the body, the husk of her, resided in Cherryvale; the spirit, the pulsing part of her, was in the land of her dreams. Events came and pa.s.sed and left her unmarked. Even the Evans elopement brought no thrill; the affair of a youth who clerks in a bank and a girl who works in a post office is tame business to one who has been partic.i.p.ating in the panoplied romances of the high-born.

Missy lived, those days, to dream in solitude or to go to Tess's where she might read of further enchantments. Then, too, at Tess's, she had a confidante, a kindred spirit, and could speak out of what was filling her soul. There is nothing more satisfying than to be able to speak out of what is filling your soul. The two of them got to using a special parlance when alone. It was freely punctuated with phrases so wonderfully camouflaged that no Frenchman would have guessed that they were French.

"Don't I hear the frou-frou of silken skirts?" inquired Missy one afternoon when she was in Tess's room, watching her friend comb the golden tresses which hung in rich profusion about her shoulders.

"It's the mater," answered Tess. "She's dressed to pay some visits to the gentry. Later she's to dine at the vicarage. She's ordered out the trap, I believe."

"Oh, not the governess-cart?"

Yes, Tess said it WAS the governess-cart; and her answer was as solemn as Missy's question.

It was that same "dinner" at the "vicarage"--in Cherryvale one dines at mid-day, and the Presbyterian minister blindly believed he had invited the O'Neills for supper--that gave Tess one of her most brilliant inspirations. It came to her quite suddenly, as all true inspirations do. The Marble Hearts would give a dinner-party!

The Marble Hearts were Missy's "crowd," thus named after Tess had joined it. Of course, said Tess, they must have a name. A fascinating fount of ideas was Tess's. She declared, now, that they MUST give a dinner-party, a regular six o'clock function. Life for the younger set in Cherryvale was so bourgeois, so ennuye. It devolved upon herself and Missy to elevate it. So, at the next meeting of the crowd, they would broach the idea. Then they'd make all the plans; decide on the date and decorations and menu, and who would furnish what, and where the fete should be held.

Perhaps Missy's house might be a good place. Yes. Missy's dining room was large, with the porch just outside the windows--a fine place for the orchestra.

Missy listened eagerly to all the earlier features of the scheme--she knew Tess could carry any point with the crowd; but about the last suggestion she felt misgivings. Mother had very strange, old-fashioned notions about some things. She MIGHT be induced to let Missy help give an evening dinner-party, though she held that fifteen-year-old girls should have only afternoon parties; but to be persuaded to lend her own house for the affair--that would be an achievement even for Tess!

However miracles continue to happen in this cut-and-dried world. When the subject was broached to Missy's mother with carefully considered tact, she bore up with puzzling but heavenly equanimity. She looked thoughtfully at the two girls in turn, and then gazed out the window.

"A six o'clock dinner-party, you say?" she repeated, her eyes apparently fixed on the nasturtium bed.

"Yes, Mrs. Merriam." It was Tess who answered. Missy's heart, an anxious lump in her throat, hindered speech.

"For heaven's sake! What next?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Aunt Nettie.

Mrs. Merriam regarded the nasturtiums for a second longer before she brought her eyes back to the two young faces and broke the tense hush.

"What made you think you wanted to give a dinner-party?"

Oh, rapture! Missy's heart subsided an inch, and she drew a long breath.

But she wisely let Tess do the replying.

"Oh, everything in Cherryvale's so pa.s.se' and ennuye'. We want to do something novel--something really distingue'--if you know what I mean."

"I believe I do," replied Mrs. Merriam gravely.

"Dis-tinn-gwy!" repeated Aunt Nettie. "Well, if you ask me--" But Mrs.

Merriam silenced her sister with an un.o.btrusive gesture. She turned to the two pet.i.tioners.