He finished "Love's Young Dream," and began the "Boulanger March." A young girl of eighteen or nineteen, with an open book in her hand, joined the children at the window. She had a beautiful, rather serious face, and it brightened into amusement, and then into earnestness, as she caught sight of the quaint vehicle, of the child under the faded umbrella, and of the empty sleeve of the musician. Pierre ground on mechanically; it was "I dreamt that I dwelt in Marble Halls" now, and he hoped that a dime would be flung from the window before he came to "Within a Mile of Edinboro' Town," for that was the weakest part of his repertoire. The group still stayed at the window, and the crisis could not be delayed. The piano jerked through several bars, stopped and repeated, wheezed and returned to the "Boulanger March," then bounded again to "Edinboro' Town," and, after several ineffectual attempts to finish it, made an asthmatic dash into "No One to Love." Pierre looked anxiously under the _porte-cochère_ for the resentful butler; but the children shrieked with renewed delight, and the young girl, going away from the window, presently appeared, running down the drive-way, and slipping on her jacket as she came. She approached the edge of the side-walk, for there was no group about the piano, and, after a brief interview with Pierre, she left a piece of silver with him, and went upstairs to her mother. Janet Gordon was a great anxiety to her family. She was possessed of the most extraordinary ideas, and no one could tell whence they came, unless she became infected by them in some mysterious fashion, as one is by microbes; at all events, she had never inherited them in the legitimate way. At present, it is true, she had not been introduced to society, but unless a great change of heart should make itself apparent in a few months, she threatened to be no ornament to her set, and no source of pride to an ambitious mother. [Illustration] "Please look out of the window, mama," she said, bringing a breath of raw air into her mother's flower-scented sitting-room. Mrs. Gordon rose languidly, her tea-gown trailing behind her. "What is it? Anything more than an organ-grinder who has been rasping my nerves for five minutes? Oh, I see what you mean; what an extraordinary combination--a child in one end of the machine! Tell Héloise to give the man a dime, dear." "I have given him a quarter myself, and have had a little talk with him; he is quite different from the ordinary organ-grinder, mama." "Oh, of course," said Mrs. Gordon good-naturedly; "all your geese are swans, dear; a dime was quite enough for him." "But he has only one arm, you see, mama." "Of course, they never have; that is one of the tricks of the trade. They bind one arm down to the side, and then slip the coat over it. If you notice the man to-morrow he will have the left sleeve hanging empty, and be playing with the right arm--it is more effective."