If Penton only had had a sense of humour ... but this I never detected in him. Even at singing classes, which I attended one evening with him ... his whole entourage, in fact.... With solemn face he sang high, and always off key, till the three women had to stuff their handkerchiefs in their mouths to keep from laughing at him before his face.... After class, we strolled home by a devious path, through the moonlight. This time Ruth walked ahead with little Dan, Hildreth with her husband, Penton,--Darrie with me.... "Drag back a little, Johnnie ... Penton and Hildreth are having a private heart-to-heart talk, I can tell by their voices." We hung back till they disappeared around a bend. We were alone. Darrie began to laugh and laugh and laugh.... "Oh, it's so funny, I shall die laughing".... * * * * * "Why--why, what's the matter!" For I saw tears streaming down the girl's face in the moonlight. "It's so awful," replied Darrie, now crying quietly, "--so tragic ... yet I had to laugh ... I'm so sorry for Penton ... for both of them.... "Penton _is_ such a jackass, Johnnie," she gulped, "and God knows, as I do, he's such an honest, good man ... helping poor people all over the country ... really fighting the fight of the down-trodden and the oppressed." I put my arm around the girl's waist, and she wept on my shoulder. Finally she straightened up her head, stopping her crying with difficulty. "We're all so funny, aren't we?" "Yes, we're a funny bunch, Darrie ... all so mixed up,--the world wouldn't believe it, would they, if we told them?" "And you could never make them understand, even if you did tell them. You know, my dear, old Southern daddy--he thinks Penton is a limb of the old Nick himself ... with his theories about life, and the freedom of relations between the sexes, and all that ... even yet he may leave me out of his will for coming up here, though he has all the confidence in the world in me." And Mary Darfield Malcolm--whom we always called "Darrie"--went quickly to her room when we got back, so the others wouldn't notice that she had been crying.... * * * * * Quite often, in the afternoons, toward dusk, around a dying fire, the whole community had "sings" out in the woods, near the one large stream that abutted the colony, and gathered into itself, all the little brooks.... The old songs were sung; rich, beautiful, old Scotch and English and Irish ballads--which were learnt, by all who wanted to know them, at the singing school ... and the old-fashioned American songs, too. And the music softened our hearts and fused us into one harmony of feeling. And all the bickerings of the community's various "isms" melted away ... after all, there was not so very much disharmony among us. And, after all, the marvel is that human beings get along together at all. * * * * *