to make me feel wistful. If things had been different--if I had been
lovely like the Scarletts, instead of looking like the Smiths--there
might have been--

Well, I don't look like the Scarletts; so there wasn't. The best I
could do was to drop a kiss on Alicia's forehead, where the bright
young hair begins to break into curls.

And that is how, neither of us having the faintest notion of what
was in store for us, Alicia Gaines and I turned our backs upon New
York and set our faces toward Hynds House.




CHAPTER II

AND ARIEL MAKES MUSIC


We had wired Judge Gatchell when to expect us, but the venerable
negro hackman who was on the lookout for us explained that the judge
had a "misery in the laigs" which confined him to his room, and that
he advised us to go to the hotel for a while.

We couldn't, for wasn't our own house waiting for us? A minute later
we had bundled into the ancient hack and were bumping and splashing
through unpaved streets, getting wet, gray glimpses of old houses in
old gardens, and every now and then a pink crape-myrtle blushing in
the pouring rain. Hyndsville was, it seemed, one of those sprawling,