And Arnold went on. Soft home-strains came from the piano, and the two old people sank into their chairs in happy musing. The twilight was growing dimmer, the strains grew more soft and subdued, dying through gentle shades into silence. There had been a little rustling sound in the doorway. Arnold turned, when he had done, and saw a white figure standing there, in listening attitude, the head half bent, the hands clasped over a straw hat whose ribbons touched the ground. Behind her was the trellis of the porch, with its sweet-brier hanging over it. It was Laura, in the very frame in which his imagination had pictured her. "Have the girls got home?" asked the old man, rousing himself, and going towards the door.--"Come in, girls. I half think we have got your great musician here. At any rate, he can work some magic, and has pulled out of the old piano all the music ever your mother and I have listened to all our life long.--My girls could not have hired me," he continued to Arnold, "to go to one of your new-fangled concerts; but whether it is because the little piano is so old, or because you know all that old music, you have brought it all back as though the world were beginning again.--We must not let him go from here to-night," he said to his wife and children. And when he found that Laura had met the musician in New York, his urgencies upon Arnold to stay were peremptory and unanswerable. As Laura's younger sister, Clara, closed her eyes that night, she said,-- "Mamma and papa think his music sounded of home and old times. How did it sound to you, Laura?" Laura put her hands over her closed eyes in the dark, and said, dreamily,--"It sounded to me like love-songs, sung by such a tender voice, out in the woods, somewhere, where there were pine-trees and a brook." "It seemed to me like butterflies," said Clara. She did not explain what she meant. The next morning, as it had been arranged in sisterly council, Laura was to entertain the stranger while Clara made the preparations for breakfast. Laura found him in the porch, already rejoicing in the morning view. But, after the first greeting, she found talking with him difficult. They fell into a silence; and to escape from it Laura finally ran into the kitchen, blue muslin and all. She pushed Clara away from the fireplace. "You must let me help," she said, and moved pots, pans, and kettles. "Another stick of wood would make this water boil," she went on. "Where shall I find it?" said a voice behind her; and Arnold directly answered his own question with his ready help.