sing aloud: Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver
fieurs-de-lys . . . Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with
vair and purple dyes . . .

She was idly wondering what a "vair" might be when her dreams were
crashed into by mother's reproving voice: "Missy, what are you
doing? If you don't get right down to practicing, there'll be no
more parties!"

Abashed, Missy made her fingers behave, but not her heart. It was
singing a tune far out of harmony with chromatic exercises, and she
was glad her mother could not hear.

The tune kept right on throughout dinner. During the meal she was
called to the telephone, and at the other end was Raymond; he wanted
her to save him the first dance that evening. What rapture--this was
what happened to the beautiful belles you read about!

After dinner mother and Aunt Nettie went to call upon some ladies
they hoped wouldn't be at home--what funny things grown-ups do! The
baby was taking his nap, and Missy had a delicious long time ahead
in which to be utterly alone.

She took the library book of poems and a book of her father's out to
the summerhouse. First she opened the book of her father's. It was a
translation of a Russian book, very deep and moving and sad and
incomprehensible. A perfectly fascinating book! It always filled her
with vague, undefinable emotions. She read: "O youth, youth! Thou
carest for nothing: thou possessest, as it were, all the treasures
of the universe; even sorrow comforts thee, even melancholy becomes