and digging bait, and promenading in our wake up
and down the creek all day, with the minnow-
bucket hanging on his arm, don't you know!"

But jolly as the days were, I think jollier were
the long evenings at the farm. After the supper in
the grove, where, when the weather permitted,
always stood the table ankle-deep in the cool green
plush of the sward; and after the lounge upon the
grass, and the cigars, and the new fish stories, and
the general invoice of the old ones, it was delectable
to get back to the girls again, and in the old
"best room" hear once more the lilt of the old
songs and the staccatoed laughter of the piano
mingling with the alto and falsetto voices of the Mills
girls, and the gallant soprano of the dear girl Doc.

This is the scene I want you to look in upon,
as, in fancy, I do now--and here are the materials
for it all, husked from the gilded roll:

Bob, the master, leans at the piano now, and Doc
is at the keys, her glad face often thrown up side-
wise toward his own. His face is boyish--for there
is yet but the ghost of a mustache upon his lip.
His eyes are dark and clear, of over-size when looking
at you, but now their lids are drooped above
his violin, whose melody has, for the time, almost
smoothed away the upward kinkings of the corners
of his mouth. And wonderfully quiet now