When the river is low, a broad, flat stone lying a little way from shore at the foot of our lawn becomes an instrument of music. In the day it plays now a rhapsody of sun, now a nocturne of cloud, now the last concerto, Opus Eternal. In the night it becomes a little friendly murmur, a cradle song, slumber spell, neighbour to the Dark, the alien Dark who very likely grows lonely, being the silent sister, whereas the Light goes on blithely companioned of us all. But if I were the Dark and owned the stars, and the potion which quickens conscience, and the sense of the great Spirit brooding, brooding, I do not know that I would exchange and be the Light. Still, the Light has rainbows and toil and the sun and laughter.... After all, it is best to be a human being and to have both Light and Darkness for one's own. And it is concerning this conclusion that the river plays on its instrument of music, this shallow river
"—to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals."

[Pg 310]

I have heard our bank cat-birds in the willows sing madrigals to the stone-music until I wanted to be one of them—cat-bird, madrigal, shallows, or anything similar. But the human is perhaps what all these are striving to express, and so I have been granted wish within wish, and life is very good.

Life was very good this summer afternoon when half the village gathered on our lawn above the singing stone, at Miggy's and Peter's "Announcement Supper." To be sure, all Friendship Village had for several days had the news and could even tell you when the betrothal took place and where; but the two were not yet engaged, as Miggy would have said, "out loud."

"What is engaged?" asked Little Child, who was the first of my guests to arrive, and came bringing an offering of infinitesimal flowers which she finds in the grass where I think that they bloom for no one else.

"It means that people love each other very much—" I began, and got no further.

"Oh, goody grand," cried Little Child. "Then I'm engaged, aren't I? To everybody."

Whenever she leads me in deep water, I am accustomed to invite her to a dolphin's back by bidding her say over some song or spell which I have taught her. This afternoon while we waited on the lawn and her little voice went among the charmed[Pg 311] words, something happened which surely must have been due to a prank of the dolphin. For when she had taken an accurate way to the last stanza of "Lucy," Little Child soberly concluded:—
"'She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and what's
The difference to me!'"

But, even so, it was charming to have had the quiet metre present.

I hope that there is no one who has not sometime been in a company on which he has looked and looked with something living in his eyes; on a company all of whom he holds in some degree of tenderness. It was so that I looked this afternoon on those who came across the lawn in the pleasant five o'clock sun, and I looked with a difference from my manner of looking on that evening of my visit to the village, when I first saw these, my neighbours. Then I saw them with delight; now I see them with delight-and-that-difference; and though that difference is, so to say, partly in my throat, yet it is chiefly deep in my understanding. There came my Mis' Amanda Toplady, with her great green umbrella, which she carries summer and winter; Mis' Postmaster Sykes, with the full-blooming stalk of her tuberose pinned on her left shoulder; Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss in the pink nun's veiling of the Post-office hall[Pg 312] supper; and my neighbour, who had consented to come, with: "I donno as that little thing would want I should stay home. Oh, but do you know, that's the worst—knowin' that the little thing never saw me and can't think about me at all!" And there came also those of whom it chances that this summer I have seen less than I should have wished: the Liberty sisters, in checked print. "It don't seem so much of a jump out of mournin' into wash goods as it does into real dress-up cloth," gentle Miss Lucy says. And Abigail Arnold, of the Home Bakery, who sent a great sugared cake for to-day's occasion. "Birthday cakes is correct," she observed, "an' weddin' cake is correct. Why ain't engagement cakes correct—especially when folks get along without the ring? I donno. I always think doin' for folks is correct, whether it's the style or whether it ain't." And Mis' Photographer Sturgis, with a new and upbraiding baby; Mis' Fire Chief Merriman in "new black, but not true mournin' now, an' anyway lit up by pearl buttons an' a lace handkerchief an' plenty o' scent." And Mis' "Mayor" Uppers who, the "mayor" not returning to his home and the tickets for the parlour clock having all been sold, to-day began offering for sale tickets on the "parlour 'suit,' brocade' silk, each o' the four pieces a differ'nt colour and all as bright as new-in-the-store." And though we all understood what she was doing and she knew[Pg 313] that we all knew, she yet drew us aside, one after another, to offer the tickets for sale privately, and we slipped the money to her beneath our handkerchiefs or our fans or our sewing.

We all had our sewing—even I have become pleasantly contaminated and have once or twice essayed eyelets. Though there was but an hour to elapse before supper-time and the arrival of the "men-folks," we settled ourselves about the green, making scallops on towels, or tatting for sheet hems, or crocheted strips for the hems of pillow-slips. Mis' Sykes had, as she almost always does have, new work which no one had ever seen before, and new work is accounted of almost as much interest as a new waist and is kept for a surprise, as a new waist should be kept. Little Child, too, had her sewing; she was buttonhole-stitching a wash-cloth and talking like a little old woman. I think that the little elf children like best to pretend in this way, as regular, arrant witches feign old womanhood.

"Aunt Effie is sick," Little Child was telling Mis' Toplady; "she is sick from her hair to her slippers."

I had a plan for Little Child and for us all; that after supper she should have leaves in her hair and on her shoulders and should dance on the singing stone in the river. And Miggy, whose shy independence is now become all shyness, was in the[Pg 314] house, weaving the leaves, and had not yet appeared at her party at all.

Then one of those charming things happened which surely have a kind of life of their own and wake the hour to singing, as if an event were a river stone, and more, round which all manner of faint music may be set stirring.

"Havin' a party when I ain't lookin'!" cried somebody. "My, my. I don't b'lieve a word of what's name—this evolution business. I bet you anything heaven is just gettin' back."

And there was Calliope, in her round straw hat and tan ulster, who in response to my card had hastened her imminent return.

"Yes," she said, when we had greeted her and put her in a chair under the mulberry tree, "my relation got well. At least, she ain't sick enough to be cross, so 'most anybody could take care of her now."

Calliope laughed and leaned back and shut her eyes.

"Land, land," she said, "I got so much to tell you about I don't know where to begin. It's all about one thing, too—somethin' I've found out."

Mis' Amanda Toplady drew a great breath and let fall her work and looked round at us all.

"Goodness," she said, "ain't it comfortable—us all settin' here together, nobody's leg broke, nobody's house on fire, nor none of us dead?"

[Pg 315]

"'Us all settin' here together,'" Calliope repeated, suddenly grave amid our laughter, "that's part of what I'm comin' to. I wonder," she said to us, "how you folks have always thought of the City? Up till I went there to stay this while I always thought of it as—well, as the City an' not so much as folks at all. The City always meant to me big crowds on the streets—hurryin', hurryin', eatin', eatin', and not payin' much attention to anything. One whole batch of 'em I knew was poor an' lookin' in bakery windows. One whole batch of 'em I knew was rich an' sayin' there has to be these distinctions. And some more I knew was good—I always see 'em, like a pretty lady, stoopin' over, givin'. And some more I knew was wicked an' I always thought of............