"Now put on your spectacles, daddy," she ordered, gaily, "or maybe you won't be able to tell who it is." She slipped a photograph from the book and held it up before him. Holding the reins between his knees, he pulled off one glove, felt in various pockets, and finally fished up a pair of steel-bowed spectacles, which he slowly adjusted.
"Miss Katherine Marks took it," she explained, "and she painted it afterward, so you can tell exactly how I looked at the masquerade-party."
"If it ain't my little magnolia blossom!" exclaimed the old man, proudly, holding the beautifully tinted photograph off at arm's length for a better view. "Wherever did you get all those fine gew-gaws? Why, Puss, you're prettier than a posy. Sort of fanciful and trimmed up, but that's your little face natural as life. I should say your mammy will be proud!"
It took all the time while they were driving the next six miles for Magnolia to tell of that memorable afternoon and night. How Lloyd Sherman had taken her over to Clovercroft, and all the Marks family had helped to make her costume. How beautiful it was, and how the girls had praised it, and even published a poem about her in the Seminary Star; and next day Miss Katherine had taken her picture, and the day after that had sent for her to come over to her studio, and had given her a copy of it to take home.
"Seems to me as if we ought to do something nice for those people who have been so kind to you," said her father, musingly, when she had told him the whole story. "You say if it hadn't been for Miss Katherine you'd have had to miss the party. If you'd have missed that you wouldn't have had that poetry about you in the paper. I'm proud of that, Puss. Seems as if my little girl is mighty popular—a sort of celebrity, to get into the paper. I'd like to show that young lady that I appreciate what she's done to make you happy. I wonder how she'd like a crock of your mammy's apple butter. There ain't no better apple butter in all Oldham County, and I should think she'd be glad to get it. I'll speak about it when we get home, and if your mammy's willing, I'll carry a crock of it to the young lady when I take you back to school Monday morning."
Magnolia was not sure of the propriety of such a gift, and he turned the matter over in his slow mind all the rest of the way home. They jogged along in silence, for she also was busy with her thoughts. She was thinking of another picture in the library book which she had not showed her father. It was an unmounted photograph of Lloyd Sherman which Miss Katherine had taken the year before.
She had photographed all the children who took part in the play of the "Rescue of the Princess Winsome," and they were arranged on a panel on her studio wall. There were several of Lloyd; one at the spinning-wheel, one with her arms around Hero's neck, and one with the knight kneeling to take her hand from the old king's. But the most beautiful one of all was the one of the Dove Song. That picture hung by itself. It was just a little medallion, showing the head of the Princess with the white dove nestled against her shoulder. The fair hair with its coronet of pearls made a halo around the sweet little face, and Magnolia stood gazing at it as if it had been the picture of an angel. She had no eyes for anything else in the studio, and Miss Flora, seeing her gaze of rapt admiration, looked across at her sister and smiled significantly.
"Haven't you a copy of that you could give her, Katherine?" she asked, in a low tone. "I never saw a child's face express such wistful longing. It makes me think of some of the little waifs I have seen at Christmas time, gazing hungrily into the shop windows at the toys and bon-bons they know can never be for them."
Miss Katherine opened a table drawer, and, after searching a few minutes among the unmounted photographs it contained, took out one, regarding it critically.
"This was a trifle too light to suit me," she said, "but too good to destroy." She crossed the room and held it out to Magnolia, who still stood gazing at its duplicate on the wall.