WE wanted Cherry to play, but we did not feel that we ought to ask her to do it; she would be tired, after her journey, and piano playing to her was no novelty.

But when, after dinner, while passing through the sitting room, on our way to the veranda she ran a harmony enticing hand over the keys as she walked by the piano, I could not help saying,

“Don’t you feel like following that up with the other hand?”

She laughed, and sitting down at the piano she said, “Why, certainly. What shall it be?”

“Oh, we leave that to you,” said Ethel. “Play what you like and you’ll play what we like.”

“Is Grieg getting old fashioned?” I asked.

“I never inquired,” said Cherry. “I don’t believe in fashions in arts. I liked Grieg, and Schumann, and Beethoven, and Mendelssohn, and Wagner, and Johann Strauss when I was a child, and so I’ll always like them. And Grieg is always fresh. What shall I play—‘Anitra’s Dance’?”

“Yes, do,” said Ethel. “I never hear that without thinking of Seidl and Brighton Beach and the throngs of doting Brooklyn women who didn’t go to hear the music, but to see Seidl. But it was beautiful music—when the roar of the surf didn’t drown it.”

Cherry found the piano stool at just the right height, and without any airs or graces beyond those which were part of her endowment, she started in to play. The windows were open and the music and the moonlight, and the hum of the insects, and the landscape became indissolubly blended, and I blessed Minerva once more for the truly “Puss-in-boots” service she had rendered to the “Marquis of Carabas.”

The dance ended, Cherry turned around on the piano stool and said,

“Minerva chose a very nice piano.”

There was a sound of steps on the porch and the shadow of a man fell across the square hallway. There was also a subdued rap on the door post.

I stepped to the door and found a tramp standing there. He was the typical tramp of the comic papers; unshaven, dusty, blear-eyed, unkempt, stoop shouldered, ragged, un-prepossessing.

“What do you wish?” said I, irritated at the interruption.

He hesitated a moment.

“I’d like a glass of milk,” said he, huskily.

“Well, go around to the back door and the girl will give you one. Don’t you want some meat?”

“Thanks; I don’t care if I do,” said he, wiping his mouth as if............