saloon itself had Nottingham-lace window-curtains, and crewel
texts enjoining remembrance of the Creator, and calling upon Him
to "bless our home." The tables, with marble tops translucent
from years of spilled ice cream, had each a worsted mat, on which
was a glass vase full of blue paper roses; on the ceiling there
was a wonderful star of scalloped blue tissue-paper--ostensibly
to allure flies, but hanging there winter and summer, year in and
year out. Between the windows that looked out on the river stood
a piano, draped with a festooning scarf of bandanna
handkerchiefs. These things seemed to Blair, at this stage of his
esthetic development, very satisfying, and part of his pleasure
in "treating" came from his surroundings; he used to look about
him enviously, thinking of the terrible dining-room at home; and
on sunny days he used to look, with even keener pleasure, at the
reflected ripple of light, striking up from the river below, and
moving endlessly across the fly-specked ceiling. Watching the
play of moving light, he would put his tin spoon into his tumbler
of ice-cream and taste the snowy mixture with a slow prolongation
of pleasure, while the two girls chattered like sparrows, and
David listened, saying very little and always ready to let
Elizabeth finish his ice-cream after she had devoured her own.

It was on one of these occasions that Blair, watching that long
ripple on the ceiling, suddenly saw the sunshine sparkle on
Elizabeth's hair, and his spoon paused midway to his lips. "Oh,
say, isn't Elizabeth's hair nice?" he said.

David turned and looked at it. "I've seen lots of girls with hair
like that," he said; but he sighed, and scratched his left ankle
with his right foot. Blair, smiling to himself, put out a