"Is it for the fund?" asked Nellie.
"Well, yes, I suppose it's for the fund, some," Isabel conceded. "But take it by an' large, it's for fun."
The night of the masquerade was soft and still, lighted by the harvest moon. Everywhere the fragrance of grapes enriched the air, and the dusty bitterness of things ripening. The little town hall was gay with lights, a curious blending of the west and east; for the boarders had left Japanese lanterns behind them, and their grotesque prettiness contrasted strangely with bowery goldenrod and asters and the red of maple leaves. Colonel Hadley, standing a moment at the doorway in his evening walk, this first night of his stay, when he had come with his nephew to look out some precious old books in the attic, and perhaps the more actually to draw Clyde away again after the errand was done, thought he had never seen such abandonment to a wild pleasure, even in his early days at Marshmead. For it was pleasure, though it seemed to be the festival of the old. Men and women bent with years and yet straightening themselves when their muscles ached, were promenading the hall, not sedately, according to the wont of Marshmead social gatherings, to fulfill a terrifying rite, but gayly, as if only by premeditation did they withstand the beckoning of the dance.
At the end of the hall, in a bower of light and greenery, sat a row of others who were apparently set apart for some honor or special service. From time to time the ranks broke, and one group after another stayed to talk with them, and always with the air of giving pleasure by their deference and heartening. Suddenly the colonel's eyes smarted with the sudden tears of a recognition which seemed to touch not only life as it innocently rioted here to-night, but all life, his own in the midst of it. At once he knew. These were the very old, and those who had lived through their fostering were paying them beautiful tribute.
At that moment his nephew, boyishly changed, but not disguised, in old Judge Hadley's coat and knee-breeches, stepped out of the moving line, a lady with him, and came to him. Clyde, too, was flushed with the strangeness of it all, and the joyous certainty that now for an evening, if only that, Nellie Lake was with him. The colonel looked at her and looked again, and she dropped her eyes in a pretty, serious modesty.
"Ellen!" he said involuntarily.
Then she laughed.
"That's my aunt," she told him. "I'm Elinor. I'm Nell. I tried to look like auntie. I guess I do."
"No," said the colonel sharply, "you don't look like Ellen Bayliss. You've made up too old."