"I always find," said Mrs. Vincent, unlocking her beautiful lips, and looking like a woman in a legend, with her gray hair and high cheek bones, "that the summer is a time for thinking more than talking." "You are right, Mrs. Vincent; don't you agree, Miss Margaret?" "I don't know," Margaret answered, carelessly. "The summer is lovely, of course; it always seems as if the world had rolled itself up a little bit nearer to heaven--" "I thought you didn't believe in any such place," said Hannah, sharply. Mrs. Vincent looked at her younger daughter with fond eyes. "One's heart sometimes believes one thing and one's head another," she said. But Margaret ate her tart in silence, and Mr. Garratt, still weighing the chances of his future, followed her example. XXI The Sunday tea was over. Hannah had successfully monopolized Mr. Garratt all the afternoon. He was becoming desperate. "She would drive a fellow mad," he thought; "why, the way she tramps into that kitchen with the tea things is enough to send any one a mile off her track. I should get the staggers if I married her; besides, she wouldn't let one call one's soul one's own by the time she was forty." He looked towards the door of the best parlor. Mrs. Vincent and Margaret were there; he got up and went in boldly. "May I venture to ask for a little music?" he asked. Margaret had risen quickly as he entered. "Oh, but it's Sunday," she answered. "I thought perhaps there wouldn't be any objection to something sacred," he said. His manner was respectful, and altogether different from that of the morning; and he had been attentive to Hannah all the afternoon--which was soothing to Margaret. "We used to sing and play hymns in mother's time," Mrs. Vincent said; "the old piano was only given to the school when James died. It was worn out and I thought they'd be glad of it." The sequence was not quite clear, but no one perceived it. "I wish you could play hymns, Margey." "Oh, but I can play something that is quite beautiful," she answered, and went towards the piano. "Allow me," Mr. Garratt said, opening it. He stood behind her in an attitude while Chopin's magnificent chords rolled upward--to Gerald Vincent's books, and down to the gray-haired woman in the chintz-covered chair, before they stole out of the open window into the Dutch garden and the indefinite wood beyond, as if they sought the cathedral. "Margaret," cried Hannah, hurrying from the kitchen, "close the piano at once. Sunday is no time for playing." "It's nothing frivolous," said Margaret; "it's a funeral march." "I'll not have it done," Hannah answered doggedly, always jealous of Margaret's accomplishments. "There's a shake in it, and it's a piece only fit for week-days." "People used to be buried on Sundays; what harm can there be in a funeral piece?" Mrs. Vincent asked.