She spoke reverently.  Alicia is the sort who flattens her nose against antique-shop windows, and would go without dessert for a month of Sundays and trudge afoot to save carfare, if thereby she might buy an old print, or a bit of pottery; just as I am content to admire the print or the pottery in the shop window, feeling sure that when they are finally sold to somebody better able to buy them, something else I can admire just as much will take their place.  Mine is a philosophy not altogether to be despised, though Alicia rejects it.  She handled the blue-and-white ware with tender hands, laid the silver together, and set the tray upon the window-ledge.  Then, on a leaf of my pocket memorandum—­she never carries one of her own—­she scribbled the following absurdity and pinned it to the linen cover: 

Ariel, accept the gratitude of mortals set down hungry in the house of Sycorax.  Gay and kind spirit, when we broke your bread you broke her spell:  the wishbone of your chicken has cooked her goose!  Maker of Music, Donator of Dinners, thanks!

“And now,” said she, “having been serenaded, and satisfied with nothing short of perfection, let’s go up-stairs, Sophy, and decide where we shall sleep to-night.”

We chose the front room because of a gate-legged table that Alicia wanted to say her prayers beside, and because of the particularly fine portrait of a colonial gentleman above the mantel, a very handsome man in claret-colored satin, with a vest of flowered gold brocade, a gold-hilted sword upon which his fine fingers rested, and a pair of silk-stockinged legs of which he seemed complacently aware.

“I wish you weren’t dead,” Alicia told him regretfully.  “Your taste in clothes is above all praise, though I fancy you were somewhat too vain of your legs, sir.  I never knew before that men had legs like that, did you, Sophy?”

“I take no pleasure in the legs of a man.”  I quoted the Psalmist acridly enough.

“Don’t pay any attention to Sophy,” Alicia advised the portrait, naughtily.  “Just to prove how much we both admire you, you shall have Ariel’s roses.”  She had brought them up-stairs with us, and now she walked over to the mantel to place them beneath the picture.

“Why!” exclaimed Alicia, “why!” and she held up nothing more remarkable than a package of cigarettes, evidently left there recently, for it was not dusty.

“I dare say Judge Gatchell forgot it, when he was looking over the house.  That reminds me:  the silver you admired so much was marked ‘G.’  Then, in all probability, Judge Gatchell sent us that spread, and very thoughtful it was of him, I must say.”

“Rheumatic old judges don’t smoke superfine cigarettes, Sophy, nor send black tray-bearers in terra-cotta robes out on rainy days for the entertainment of strange ladies.  No:  this is something, or somebody, young.  But since when did Ariel take to tobacco?”