“You need n’t have rung, ’m; they goes right in without ringing to-day,” she said pleasantly.

“Can I see Mrs. Bird?” I asked.

“Well, ’m,” she said hesitatingly, “she ’s in Paradise.”

“Lovely Margaret Crosby dead!  How sudden it must have been,” I thought, growing pale with the shock of the surprise; but the pretty maid, noticing that something had ruffled my equanimity, went on hastily:—­

“Excuse me, ’m.  I forgot you might be a stranger, but the nurses and mothers always comes to this door, and we ’re all a bit flustered on account of its bein’ Miss Pauline’s last ‘afternoon,’ and the mothers call the music-room ‘Paradise,’ ’m, and Mr. John and the rest of us have took it up without thinkin’ very much how it might sound to strangers.”

“Oh, I see,” I said mechanically, though I did n’t see in the least; but although the complicated explanation threw very little light on general topics, it did have the saving grace of assuring me that Margaret Bird was living.

“Could you call her out for a few minutes?” I asked.  “I am an old friend, and shall be disappointed not to see her.”

“I ’m sorry, ’m, but I could n’t possibly call her out; it would be as much as my place is worth.  Her strict orders is that nobody once inside of Paradise door shall be called out.”

“That does seem reasonable,” I thought to myself.

“But,” she continued, “Mrs. Bird told me to let young Mr. Noble up the stairs so ’t he could peek in the door, and as you ’re an old friend I hev n’t no objections to your goin’ up softly and peekin’ in with him till Miss Pauline ’s through,—­it won’t be long, ’m.”

My curiosity was aroused by this time, and I came to the conclusion that “peekin’ in the door” of Paradise with “young Mr. Noble” would be better than nothing; so up I went, like a thief in the night.

The room was at the head of the stairs, and one of the doors was open, and had a heavy portiere hanging across it.  Behind this was young Mr. Noble, “peekin’” most greedily, together with a middle-aged gentleman not described by the voluble parlor maid.  They did n’t seem to notice me; they were otherwise occupied, or perhaps they thought me one of the nurses or mothers.  I had heard the sound of a piano as I crossed the hall, but it was still now.  I crept behind young Mr. Noble, and took a good “peek” into Paradise.

It was a very large apartment, one that looked as if it might have been built for a ball-room; at least, there was a wide, cushioned bench running around three sides of it, close to the wall.  On one side, behind some black and gold Japanese screens, where they could hear and not be seen, sat a row of silent, capped and aproned nurse-maids and bonneted mammas.  Mrs. Bird was among them, lovely and serene as an angel still, though she has had her troubles.  There was a great fireplace in the room, but it was banked up with purple and white lilacs.  There was a bowl of the same flowers on the grand piano, and a clump of bushes sketched in chalk on a blackboard.  Just then a lovely young girl walked from the piano and took a low chair in front of the fireplace.