_Come with thy lute to the fountain, Sing me a song of the mountain, Sing of the happy and free:_— She looks at the lovely lady in the white satin gown in the great gold frame before her. How beautiful she must have been! She died when she was very young. Her husband shot himself with grief for her. She might have sung that song to him—who knows? The Child chokes and swallows her tears at the end of the song, and when she looks at Miss Salome she sees that her eyes, too, are full of tears. “Oh, I have made you cry! I am sorry—so sorry!” Miss Salome wipes her eyes. “If I make my guests unhappy, they will not care to come again,” she says. “Ring for Peter, dear child.” So the Child taps the bell, and Peter comes gravely in with the beautiful silver tray, and in a flutter of delight the Child forgets the song and the picture. Miss Salome cuts the dark frosted cake, and dishes into glass plates the candied ginger, floating in syrup, and pours out cups of real tea. And the Fairy Princess is served with a banquet worthy of her dreams. Oh, to be at last in Miss Salome’s mansion! The clock chimes for half-past five. Heaven is over. She brushes the crumbs to a little heap on her gilt-rimmed plate. “I must go now, I think,” she says with obvious effort. Her hostess smiles. “But you will come next week?” she asks. And the Child’s face lights up. “Oh, yes! I’ll surely come next week, _surely_,” she replies with emphasis. So she goes around to Miss Salome’s chair, and the beautiful ringed hand raises her face and strokes her little freckled cheek. “Good-by, my Sunshine!” she says. The Child catches the hand in a rush of loving worship and kisses it. “I will never be cross to William Searles again, never!” she cries. “I will be good to everybody—even to stupid people!” Miss Salome pinches her cheek and laughs. And the Child goes out and down the steps of the terrace, rapt, wondering, lifted to a height of love and admiration that keeps her little soul to its sweetest, highest pitch for—ah, measure not the time, I beg you! The children who are older, how long do the glow and the flush remain with them? They can only say, “There will be another!” and wait for it as well and patiently as may be. The Child goes back to the life of everyday, and embroiders its dull web with eyes of peacocks and sifts into it the scent of sandal-wood, and sets it weaving to the tune of ballads, quaint and sweet. Yet she has taken into another’s web, unknowing, a tiny scarlet thread of happiness, that weaves through the tarnished cloth of silver and blesses the pattern as it grows. And the Master of the Looms has planned it all. ARDELIA IN ARCADY [Illustration: “_Throwing assorted refuse._”]