intoned Lulu, Chiquita, and Clara together.

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow? 
Silver bells and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.”

said Peachy.

“The hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,” began Julia.  With no effort of the memory, with a faultless enunciation, a natural feeling for rhythm and apparently with comprehension, she, recited the Atalanta chorus.

“That’s enough for lessons,” Honey demanded.

“Wait a moment!”

He rushed into the bushes and busied himself among the fire-flies.  The other four men, divining his purpose, joined him.  They came back with handkerchiefs tied full of tiny, wriggling, fluttering green creatures.

In a few moments, the five women sat crowned with carcanets of living fire.

“Now read us a story,” Lulu begged.

Pete drew a little book from his pocket.  Discolored and swollen, the print was big and still black.

“‘Once upon a time,’” he began, “’there was a little girl who lived with her father and her stepmother — ’”

“What’s ’stepmother’?” Lulu asked.

Pete explained.

“The stepmother had two daughters, and all three of these women were cruel and proud — — ’”

“What’s ’cruel and proud’?” Chiquita asked.

Pete explained.

“’And so between the three the little girl had a very hard time.  She worked like a slave all day long, and was never allowed to go out of the kitchen.  The stepmother and the proud sisters, used to go to balls every night, leaving the little girl alone.  Because she was always so dusty and grimy from working over the fire, they called her Cinderella.  Now, it happened that the country was ruled by a very handsome young prince -’”

“What’s ’handsome young prince’?” Clara asked.

Pete explained.

“‘And all the ladies of the kingdom were in love with him.’”

“What’s ’in love’?” Peachy asked.

Pete closed the book.

“Ah, that’s a question,” he said after an instant of meditation, “that will admit of some answer.  Say, you fellers, you’d better come into this.”

D.

Moonlight on Angel Island.

The sea lay like a carpet of silver stretched taut from the white line of the waves to the black seam of the sky.  The land lay like a crumpled mass of silver velvet, heaped to tinselled brightness here, hollowed to velvety shadow there.  Over both arched the mammoth silver tent of the sky.  In the cleft in the rock on the southern reef sat Julia and Billy.  Under a tree at the north sat Peachy and Ralph.  Scattered in shaded places between sat the others.  The night was quiet; but on the breeze came murmurs sometimes in the man’s voice, sometimes in the woman’s.  Fragmentary they were, these murmurs, and inarticulate; but their composite was ever the same.