rustic adornments, such as seats and grottos, and at one end of the grove was a small collection of wild animals in cages, and a little artificial pond with swans.  Now and then, above the chatter of the people and the music of the orchestra, sounded the growl of a bear or the shrill screech of a paroquet, and the people all stopped and listened and laughed.  This little titillation of the unusual in the midst of their sober walk of life affected them like champagne.  Most of them were of the poorer and middle classes, the employes of the factories of Rowe.  They moved back and forth with dancing steps of exultation.

“My, ain’t it beautiful!” Fanny said, squeezing Andrew’s arm.  He had his wife on one arm, his mother on the other.  For him the whole scene appeared more than it really was, since it reflected the joy of his own soul.  There was for him a light greater than that of the moon or electricity upon it—­that extreme light of the world—­the happiness of a human being who blesses in a moment of prosperity the hour he was born.  He knew for the first time in his life that happiness is as true as misery, and no mere creation of a fairy tale.  No trees of the Garden of Eden could have outshone for him those oaks and birches.  No gold or precious stones of any mines on earth can equal the light of the little star of happiness in one human soul.

Fanny, as they walked along, kept looking at her husband, and her own face was transfigured.  Mrs. Zelotes, also, seemed to radiate with a sort of harsh and prickly delight.  She descanted upon the hard-earned savings which Andrew had risked, but she held her old head very high with reluctant joy, and her bonnet had a rakish cant.

Ellen, with Abby and Maria, walked behind them.

Presently Andrew met another man who had also purchased stock in the mine, and stopped to exchange congratulations.  The man’s face was flushed, as if he had been drinking, but he had not.  On his arm hung his wife, a young woman with a showy red waist and some pink ribbon bows on her hat.  She was teetering a little in time to the music, while a little girl clung to her skirts and teetered also.

“Well, old man,” said the new-comer, with a hoarse sound in his throat, “they needn’t talk to us any more, need they?”

“That’s so,” replied Andrew, but his joy in prosperity was not like the other man’s.  It placed him heights above him, although from the same cause.  Prosperity means one thing to one man, and another to his brother.

Presently they met Jim Tenny and Eva and Amabel.  They were walking three abreast, Amabel in the middle.  Jim Tenny looked hesitatingly at them, although his face was widened with irrepressible smiles.  Eva gazed at them with defiant radiance.  “Well,” said she, “so luck has turned?”

Amabel laughed out, and her laugh trilled high with a note of silver, above the chatter of the crowd and the blare and rhythmic trill of the orchestra.  “I’ve had an ice-cream, and I’m going to have a new doll and a doll-carriage,” said she.  “Oh, Ellen!” She left her father and mother for a second and clung to Ellen, kissing her; then she was back.