She was just rising impatiently when the front door opened and her father came in, exclaiming in a cheery voice, “Well, children!” Then he stopped in surprise.  “Why, someone told me Arthur was here!” he exclaimed.

“He’s gone home again,” said Helen, in a dissatisfied tone.

“Home!” exclaimed the other.  “To Hilltown?”

“Yes.”

“But I thought he was going to stay until tomorrow.”

“So did I,” said Helen, “but he changed his mind and decided that he’d better not.”

“Why, I am really disappointed,” said Mr. Davis.  “I thought we should have a little family party; I haven’t seen Arthur for a month.”

“There is some important reason,” said Helen—­“that’s what he told me, anyway.”  She did not want her father to have any idea of the true reason, or to ask any inconvenient questions.

Mr. Davis would perhaps have done so, had he not something else on his mind.  “By the way, Helen,” he said, “I must ask you, what in the world was that fearful noise you were making?”

“Noise?” asked Helen, puzzled for a moment.

“Why, yes; I met old Mr. Nelson coming down the street, and he said that you were making a most dreadful racket upon the piano, and shouting, too, and that there were a dozen people standing in the street, staring!”

A sudden wild thought occurred to Helen, and she whirled about.  Sure enough, she found the two windows of the room wide open; and that was too much for her gravity; she flung herself upon the sofa and gave vent to peal after peal of laughter.

“Oh, Daddy!” she gasped.  “Oh, Daddy!”

Mr. Davis did not understand the joke, but he waited patiently, taking off his gloves in the meantime.  “What it is, Helen?” he enquired.

“Oh, Daddy!” exclaimed the girl again, and lifted herself up and turned her laughing eyes upon him.  “And now I understand why inspired people have to live in the country!”

“What was it, Helen?”

“It—­it wasn’t anything, Daddy, except that I was playing and singing for Arthur, and I forgot to close the windows.”

“You must remember, my love, that you live in a clergyman’s house,” said Mr. Davis.  “I have no objection to merriment, but it must be within bounds.  Mr. Nelson said that he did not know what to think was the matter.”

Helen made a wry face at the name; the Nelsons were a family of Methodists who lived across the way.  Methodists are people who take life seriously as a rule, and Helen thought the Nelsons were very queer indeed.

“I’ll bet he did know what to think,” she chuckled, “even if he didn’t say it; he thought that was just what to expect from a clergyman who had a decanter of wine on his dinner table.”

Mr. Davis could not help smiling.  And as for Helen, she was herself all over again; for when her father had come in, she had about reached a point where she could no longer bear to be serious and unhappy.  As he went on to ask her to be a little less reckless, Helen put her arms around him and said, with the solemnity that she always wore when she was gayest:  “But, Daddy, I don’t know what I’m to do; you sent me to Germany to study music, and if I’m never to play it—­”