and watching her half-sister’s every movement without winking or turning her head.  So that Ruth and David were left to follow their own fanciful devices, free to put flowers everywhere.  They wrought out their fancies to the fullest and the more fantastic, as the artistic instinct rarely fails to do in its first freedom.  When they were done, the great room of Cedar House was an oddly charming sight, worth going far to see.  Never before had it been so wonderful, strange, and beautiful.  It had now become an enchanted bower of mingled bloom and fragrance, shadowed within yet open to the sun-lit day and the flashing river.

“There!” cried Ruth, looking round, with her head on one side.  “There isn’t one forgotten spot for another flower.  Now, I must run and dress.  And you must wait here till I come back, David, dear, for the doctor may arrive at any moment, and somebody should be ready to welcome him.  Why! aunt Molly has actually followed aunt Penelope clear to the kitchen, so that there is no one left but you.  Don’t go till I come back.”

She went up the broad, dark stairs, turning on almost every step to look down over the room and drink in the beauty and sweetness.  David, also, drank it in still more eagerly, taking deep intoxicating draughts, as the thirsty take cool, sparkling wine.  He then sat quietly looking about and waiting.  His book was in his pocket, as it nearly always was when not in his hand.  But he had grown shy of reading “The Famous History of Montilion—­Knight of the Oracle, Son to the true Mirror of Princes, the most Renowned Pericles, showing his Strange Birth, Unfortunate Love, Perilous Adventures in Arms:  and how he came to the Knowledge of his Parents, interlaced with a Variety of Pleasant and Delightful Discourse,” since Ruth had laughed at it, and had laid the blame for his weakness upon the romance.  And then his craving for the romantic and beautiful was satisfied for the moment by gazing about this big, strange, shadowy, embowered room.  Moreover, Ruth came back very soon.  When beauty is young, fresh, natural, and very, very great, it does not need much time for its adornment.  Ruth’s toilet was like a bird’s.  A quick dip in pure, cold water—­a flutter of soft garments as the radiant wings cast off the crystal drops—­and she was ready to meet the full glory of the sunlight.  When she thus came smiling down the stairs that day, with the dew of life’s morning fresh upon her, David turned from the flowers.

“Yes, indeed!  Isn’t it a lovely frock!” she cried, running her hand lightly over the big, puffy, short sleeve.  “It is one of the last uncle Philip had made in New Orleans, and fetched up the river.  You might draw this muslin through my smallest ring.  See this dear little girdle—­way up here right under my arms—­and so delicately worked in these pale blue forget-me-nots, that look as if they were just in bloom.  See!”—­lifting the gauzy skirt as a child lifts its apron—­“Here