Many ramshackle old wagons were already drawn up in the barn-yard and hitched to trees along the cart track. Their owners were grouped in the dooryard around the stoves and tables and boxes of "articles too numerous to mention," chattering over the merits and flaws of mattresses and lamps, and sitting in the chairs to find out whether or not they were comfortable. A bent old farmer with a chin-beard, stood chuckling over an ancient cradle that leaned against a wash-tub. "There's one most 's old 's I be!" he said, addressing the world at large; "fust thing I 'member, I crawled outen one like thet!" The auctioneer was selling farm tools and stock at the other side of the house, and most of the men-folks were congregated there--tall, solemn people, still wearing winter mufflers--soberly chewing tobacco and comparing notes on the tools. Felicia and Kirk, though they would have liked well enough to own the old white horse and the Jersey heifers, felt themselves unable to afford live stock, and stayed in the dooryard. Among the furniture so mercilessly dragged from its familiar surroundings to stand on the trampled grass, was a little, square, weathered thing, which Felicia at first failed to recognize as the inevitable melodeon. It lacked all the plush and gewgaws of the parlor organ of commerce; such a modest, tiny gray box might easily have passed for a kitchen chest. Felicia pushed back the cover, and, pressing a pedal with one foot, gave forth the chords of her favorite, "How should I your true love know?" The organ had a rather sweet old tone, unlike the nasal and somewhat sanctimonious drone of most melodeons, and Felicia, hungry for the piano that had not been brought to Asquam, almost wished she could buy it. She remembered Ken's prophecy--"you'll come home with a melodeon"--and turned away, her cheeks all the pinker when she found the frankly interested eyes of several bumpkins fixed upon her. But Kirk was not so ready to leave the instrument. "Why don't we get that, Phil?" he begged. "We _must_ have it; don't you think so?" "It will go for much more than we can afford," said Felicia. "And you have the Maestro's piano. Listen! They're beginning to sell the things around here." "But _you_ haven't the Maestro's piano!" Kirk protested, clinging very tightly to her hand in the midst of all this strange, pushing crowd.