Asenath forgot that the face turned up to hers, with the smile and the tears and the color in it, was the face of her hired servant. A lovely soul, all alight with thought and gladness, met her through it.
She bent down and touched Bel's forehead with her lady-lips.
Bel put the little scribbled paper in her hand, and ran away, up-stairs.
"Will you give it to me, Bel, and let me do what I please with it?"—Mrs. Scherman went to Bel and asked next day.
Bel blushed. She had been a little frightened in the morning to think of what had happened over night. She could not quite recollect all the words of her verses, and she wondered if they were really as pretty as she had fancied in the moment of making them.
All she could answer was that Mrs. Scherman was "very kind."
"Then you'll trust me?"
And Bel, wondering very much, but too shy to question, said she would.
A few days after that, Asenath called her up-stairs. The postman had rung five minutes before, and Kate had carried up a note.
"We were just in time with our little spring song," she said. "Bluebirds have to sing early; at least a month beforehand. See here! Is this all right?" and she put into Bel's hand a little roughish slip of paper, upon which was printed:—