The young lady whom she addressed had been leaning back in her seat by Mrs. Harrington, quite regardless of this laughing contention, looking straight before her in a smiling, dreamy way, which proved that the brightness of the scene and the spell of the music had wiled her into some deep and pleasant train of thought. Her friend spoke twice before she heard, laughing gayly at her abstraction, and Mrs. Harrington added-- "Do come out of dreamland, dear Miss Fuller; I am sure I cannot manage this wilful little thing without your help." The young girl shook her parasol again in a pretty, threatening way as she said-- "You are not tired, Elizabeth?" "Tired! Oh no; it is very pleasant," she replied, in a voice that was low and musical with the sweetness of her broken reverie. "See, you are in the minority, Mrs. Harrington," cried Elsie Mellen. "You had better submit with a good grace." "Oh, I knew Elizabeth dared not side against you; she spoils you worse than anybody, even your brother." "But it's so nice to be spoiled," said Elsie, gayly; "and you must help in it, or I shall do something dreadful to you just here before everybody's eyes." She clenched her hand playfully, as if to carry her threat into instant execution, and Mrs. Harrington cried out-- "I promise! I promise! James, take another turn." The man turned his horses with a broad sweep, taking the road around the largest lake. Here the spoiled beauty ordered him to stop. She wanted to look at the swans, "such great, white, lovely drifting snowballs as they were." Mrs. Harrington made no objection, but leaned back with a resigned smile on her lips. A person possessed of far more imagination than Elsie Mellen ever dreamed of, might have stopped on the very road to paradise to gaze on that pretty, Arcadian scene. The lake was one glow of silver, broken up in long, glittering swaths by troops of swans that sailed over it with leisurely gracefulness, now pausing to crop the short grass from the sloping banks, or ruffling their short white plumage, and stretching their arched necks for payments of fruit whenever they came near a group of children, or saw a rustic from the country, who was sure to delight in seeing the birds feed. The sunshine came slanting in from the west, cooling half the park with shadows, and lighting the rest with gleams of purplish gold. The paths around the margin of the lake, and all the sloping banks were alive with gayly dressed people, and a single boat, over which a flock of gay parasols hovered like tropical birds, mirrored itself in the water. "Now see what you have gained by obeying my orders," exclaimed Elsie, casting her merry eyes over the scene. "I declare the swans look like a fleet of fairy boats. How I would like to sail about on one! There, that will do James, drive on." "Home?" inquired the man. Before his mistress could answer, Elsie broke in--"Yes, Mrs. Harrington, since you are properly submissive, we will go home, if you wish."