“Now, go and ask some of the other young ladies. They are all waiting for you, I know,” she said. But Fred shook his head. He was tired with the exertion he had made. He was beginning to sweat. He had had enough dancing unless Louie were his partner, and handing her over to his successor he went out for a breath of cool air, but came back very soon and watched the white muslin dress and red ribbons as they floated up and down the broad piazza, while Louie’s face told how she was enjoying it all. “She is airy and graceful as a bird, and by far the best dancer here, if I am any judge,” he thought, and was glad that she had no lack of partners. Every young man who did not know her asked to be presented, and invited her to dance, until she had a surfeit of it and began to feel tired, and was glad when Herbert came to her with a request from Miss Percy that she would sing something for those who did not dance. “I have told Blanche about your voice, and she is anxious to hear it,” he said. Louie was nearly as ready to sing as to dance, and her voice had that bird-like quality which too much training sometimes spoils by taking away its naturalness. All her life she had been in the habit of imitating the birds, succeeding so well that it was sometimes difficult to tell whether it were herself trilling the roundelay or the robin, sitting on a high branch of a tree, with his head bent in a listening attitude as if trying to decide whether the sounds he heard were human or came from some new-comer in the field. She had had several months of instruction in vocal music, but her best teachers had been the birds, and especially her canary, whose notes she imitated so closely that he often stopped in his song for an instant, and then, as if reassured, began again with her, the two voices blending together without a discord on her part, so accurately did she follow him. One song, whose music she had changed to suit her voice, she called her bird-song, as it gave scope to her especial talent, and ended with a medley of sounds—the twitter of the sparrow, the robin’s whistle, the oriole’s notes, and the tones of her canary when in its happiest mood. “Give us the bird-song, by all means,” Herbert said, when she asked what she should sing, and in a moment Louie was standing in the music-room, facing as large an audience as she had left in the dancing-hall. They were mostly elderly people from the city, who, tired of watching the dancers, were glad of any new diversion, although a few yawned behind their fans when told that the girl in white muslin, who stood by the piano, was to sing for them.