in the bottomless piece-bag," Barbara was saying, at the same moment,
in the room beyond. "And you can bring out your old ribbon-box for the
bowing-up, Rosamond. It's a charity to clear out your glory-holes once
in a while. It's going to be just--splend-umphant!"

"If you don't go and talk about it," said Rosamond. "We _must_ keep
the new of it to ourselves."

"As if I needed!" cried Barbara, indignantly. "When I hushed up Harry
Goldthwaite, and went round all the rest of the evening without doing
anything but just give you that awful little pinch!"

"That was bad enough," said Rosamond, quietly; she never got cross or
inelegantly excited about anything. "But I _do_ think the girls will
like it. And we might have tea out on the broad piazza."

"That is bare floor too," said Barbara, mischievously.

Now, our dining-room had not yet even the English drugget. The dark
new boards would do for summer weather, mother said. "If it had been
real oak, polished!" Rosamond thought. "But hard-pine was kitcheny."

Ruth went to bed with the rest of her thinking and the brook-music
flittering in her brain.

Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks had talked behind her with Jeannie Hadden about
her playing. It was not the compliment that excited her so, although
they said her touch and expression were wonderful, and that her
fingers were like little flying magnets, that couldn't miss the right
points. Jeannie Hadden said she liked to _see_ Ruth Holabird play, as