immediately he has the grand manner, the bel air."

Hedrick exploded. "`Bel air'!" he screamed, and began to jump up and down, tossing his arms frantically, and gasping with emotion. "Oh, bel air! Oh, blah! `Henry Esmond!' Been readin' `Henry Esmond!' Oh, you be-yoo-tiful Cora-Beatrix-a-lee! Magganifisent torso! Gull_o_-rious figgi-your! Bel air! Oh, slush! Oh, luv-a-ly slush!" He cast himself convulsively upon the floor, full length. "Luv-a-ly, luv-a-ly slush!"

"He is thirty, I should say," continued Cora, thoughtfully. "Yes—about thirty. A strong, keen face, rather tanned. He's between fair and dark——"

Hedrick raised himself to the attitude of the "Dying Gaul." "And with `hair slightly silvered at the temples!' Ain't his hair slightly silvered at the temples?" he cried imploringly. "Oh, sister, in pity's name let his hair be slightly silvered at the temples? Only three grains of corn, your Grace; my children are starving!"

He collapsed again, laid his face upon his extended arms, and writhed.

"He has rather wonderful eyes," said Cora. "They seem to look right through you."

"Slush, slush, luv-a-ly slush," came in muffled tones from the floor.

"And he wears his clothes so well—so differently! You feel at once that he's not a person, but a personage."

Hedrick sat up, his eyes closed, his features contorted as with agony, and chanted, impromptu:

    "Slush, slush, luv-a-ly, slush!
    Le'ss all go a-swimmin' in a dollar's worth o' mush.
    Slush in the morning, slush at night,
    If I don't get my slush I'm bound to get tight!"

"Hedrick!" said his mother.

"Altogether I should say that Mr. Valentine Corliss looks as if he lived up to his name," Cora went on tranquilly. "Valentine Corliss of Corliss Street—I think I rather like the sound of that name." She let her beautiful voice linger upon it, caressingly. "Valentine Corliss."

Hedrick opened his eyes, allowed his countenance to resume its ordinary proportions, and spoke another name slowly and with honeyed thoughtfulness:

"Ray Vilas."

This was the shot that told. Cora sprang down from the table with an exclamation.

Hedrick, subduing elation, added gently, in a mournful whisper:

"Poor old Dick Lindley!"

His efforts to sting his sister were completely successful at last: Cora was visibly agitated, and appealed hotly to her mother. "Am I to bear this kind of thing all my life? Aren't you ever going to punish his insolence?"

"Hedrick, Hedrick!" said Mrs. Madison sadly.

Cora turned to the girl by the window with a pathetic gesture.
"Laura——" she said, and hesitated.

Laura Madison looked up into her sister's troubled eyes.

"I feel so morbid," said Cora, flushing a little and glancing away. "I wish——" She stopped.

The silent Laura set aside her work, rose and went out of the room. Her cheeks, too, had reddened faintly, a circumstance sharply noted by the terrible boy. He sat where he was, asprawl, propped by his arms behind him, watching with acute concentration the injured departure of Cora, following her sister. At the door, Cora, without pausing, threw him a look over her shoulder: a full-eyed shot of frankest hatred.

A few moments later, magnificent chords sounded through the house. The piano was old, but tuned to the middle of the note, and the keys were swept by a master hand. The wires were not hammered; they were touched knowingly as by the player's own fingers, and so they sang—and from out among the chords there stole an errant melody. This was not "piano-playing" and not a pianist's triumphant nimbleness—it was music. Art is the language of a heart that knows how to speak, and a heart that knew how was speaking here. What it told was something immeasurably wistful, something that might have welled up in the breast of a young girl standing at twilight in an April orchard. It was the inexpressible made into sound, an improvisation by a master player.

"You hear what she's up to?" said Hedrick, turning his head at last. But his mother had departed.

He again extended himself flat upon the floor, face downward, this time as a necessary preliminary to rising after a manner of his own invention. Mysteriously he became higher in the middle, his body slowly forming first a round and then a pointed arch, with forehead, knees, and elbows touching the floor. A brilliantly executed manoeuvre closed his Gothic period, set him upright and upon his feet; then, without ostentation, he proceeded to the kitchen, where he found his mother polishing a sugar-bowl.

He challenged her with a damnatory gesture in the direction of the music. "You hear what Cora's up to?"

Mrs. Madison's expression was disturbed; she gave her son a look almost of appeal, and said, gently:

"I believe there's nothing precisely criminal in her getting Laura to play for her. Laura's playing always soothes her when she feels out of sorts—and—you weren't very considerate of her, Hedrick. You upset her."

"Mentioning Ray Vilas, you mean?" he demanded.

"You weren't kind."

"She deserves it. Look at her! You know why she's got Laura at the piano now."

"It's—it's because you worried her," his mother faltered evasively. "Besides, it is very hot, and Cora isn't as strong as she looks. She said she felt morbid and——"

"Morbid? Blah!" interrupted the direct boy. "She's started after this Corliss man just like she did for Vilas. If I was Dick Lindley I wouldn't stand for Cora's——"

"Hedrick!" His mother checked his outburst pleadingly. "Cora has so much harder time than the other girls; they're all so much better off. They seem to get everything they want, just by asking: nice clothes and jewellery—and automobiles. That seems to make a great difference nowadays; they all seem to have automobiles. We're so dreadfully poor, and Cora has to struggle so for what good times she——"

"Her?" the boy jibed bitterly. "I don't see her doing any particular struggling." He waved his hand in a wide gesture. "She takes it all!"

"There, there!" the mother said, and, as if feeling the need of placating this harsh judge, continued gently: "Cora isn't strong, Hedrick, and she does have a hard time. Almost every one of the other girls in her set is at the seashore or somewhere having a gay summer. You don't realize, but it's mortifying to have to be the only one to stay at home, with everybody knowing it's because your father can't afford to send her. And this house is so hopeless," Mrs. Madison went on, extending her plea hopefully; "it's impossible to make it attractive, but Cora keeps trying and trying: she was all morning on her knees gilding those chairs for the music-room, poor child, and——"

"`Music-room'!" sneered the boy. "Gilt chairs! All show-off!
That's all she ever thinks about. It's all there is to Cora, just
show-off, so she'll get a string o' fellows chasin' after her.
She's started for this Corliss just exactly the way she did for
Ray Vilas!"

"Hedrick!"

"Just look at her!" he cried vehemently. "Don't you know she's tryin' to make this Corliss think it's her playin' the piano right now?"

"Oh, no——"

"Didn't she do that with Ray Vilas?" he demanded quickly. "Wasn't that exactly what she did the first time he ever came