asked her.

The evenings to Keineth were the happiest, for, after his work was
finished, Daddy always took her out somewhere for dinner. Sometimes
they would go into queer, small places; rooms lighted by gas-jets,
where they ate on bare tables from off thick white plates. She would
sit very quietly listening while her father talked to the people he
met. It seemed to her that her father knew everybody. Other times they
would go up town on the bus, Keineth clinging tightly to her father's
hand all the way, and they would find a corner in a brightly lighted
hotel dining-room, where the silver and glass sparkled before Keineth's
eyes, where an orchestra, hidden behind big palms, played wonderful
music as they ate, where the air was sweet with the fragrance of
flowers like Joe Massey's stall on the square, and where all the women
were pretty and wore soft furs over shimmering dresses of lovely
colors. Sometimes Tante went with them, looking very prim in her
tailor-made suit of gray woolen cloth and her small gray hat. On these
picnic dinners, as Daddy called them, Daddy was always in rollicking
spirits, keeping up such a torrent of nonsense that Keineth was often
quite exhausted from laughing. Then, when they were back in the old
house, Daddy would pull his big chair close to the lamp, Tante would
take her knitting from the basket in which it was always neatly laid,
and Keineth would sit down at the piano to play for her father "what
the fairies put in her fingers." This had been a little game between
them for a long time--ever since her music lessons with Madame Henri
had begun.

Now--as the child sat balanced on the edge of an old rocker watching
Tante tenderly and carefully placing her books into a heavy box--she
felt that this beloved order of things was changing before her eyes.