The third time she tried she was quite well pleased with her own success, and this time, as she came down to the last staff, upon that first page, Edward Ross's hand appeared on the top of the page, ready to turn it over. Psyche neither screamed nor flinched. She nodded simply: she was under the inspiration of the music now, and she played well. She played the whole piece through. Then he thanked her, and she thanked him. She played a good deal for him that evening. He brought down his William Morris and showed it to her, and read to her some of the best things in it. And so they spent two hours together very nicely, and by the time the madding crowd came back from the Solferino House, Psyche was not in the least sorry that she had not gone to the hop, and Edward Ross was very glad she had not gone. There is a lovely little burn or brook which runs through a shady ravine behind the Columbia House, I forget what they call it. It might be called the Lovers' Brook or the Maiden's Home or the Fairy's Bath, or anything that verdant seventeen thought sweet enough. Age cannot wither nor custom stale its infinite variety. Edward Ross found no difficulty in making up a party of the young people at the hotel to go on a picnic up this brook the next day. By some device he made Agnes Verney think she would stay at home to flirt with an old West Indian, who was far too gouty to go even to the first fall. This left the pretty Psyche free to go. And she went, in the charming adornment of the unadorned simplicity of her pretty mountain walking-dress. And there were quite as many gentlemen as there were ladies, to help at all the hard fords and to lift them at all the steep climbings. So Priscilla Verney had her cavalier, and Polly Verney, whom the young men called "Bloody Mary," had her Philip, and the Garner girls were taken care of, and the Spragues and the Dunstables. For every girl, there was a young man; and if at most of the separating places Edward Ross and my pretty Psyche were together, it was not that they did not their full duty by society; for they did. And a very pleasant day it was. That day Jabez Sprague asked Ann Garner to marry him, and she refused him point-blank: that made it a very pleasant day to her. That day Tunstall Dunstable asked Martha Jeffrey to marry him, and she said she would: that made it a very pleasant day to her. They all came home at five or six in the afternoon, very bright and jolly most of them, and those who were not bright and jolly pretended they were. Edward Ross had not asked Psyche to marry him, but I believe they had enjoyed the day as much as any one.