“Have you, Gracie?” Nan put her arm affectionately around the more timid girl’s shoulder. “I guess we all have been. It will be good to see Walter because he has seen all our parents since we left. Now let’s go downstairs and tell cousin Adair.”
But the girls lingered a little while longer, talking and planning. “It must have been fate that kept us there,” Laura laughed afterwards, for one of the very nicest things of all their trip happened just before they departed.
It was Nan who heard it first, that faint far-away sound of the strumming of a guitar. “Sh! Quiet!” she broke in on the hubbub in the room. “What’s that I hear?” They all listened for a second.
“Oh, nothing.” Laura waved the question aside, “and do you think we can get Mr. MacKenzie to go with us again on a mule ride over the estate?” she went on with the planning of entertainment for the boys.
“It is too something,” Nan insisted, for she heard again the sound of music. “Listen!”
“Oh, Nan, you’re hearing things,” Laura perhaps was more impatient than any of the others, for she was intrigued with the idea of asking Adair to get on a mule again, and she wanted to talk about it.
“She isn’t either.” Bess heard the strains now. “I hear something too.”
“Come—oh, look!” Nan was at a balcony window beckoning the others eagerly. They all clustered round her, and there in the moonlit courtyard below them Walter and his friends were serenading the girls. When they all appeared, the music grew louder, stronger, and the boys harmonized their voices as they sang for the second time,
“Soft o’er the fountain,
Ling’ring falls the southern moon;
Far o’er the mountain,
Breaks the day too soon!
In thy dark eyes’ splendor,
Where the warm light loves to dwell,
Weary looks, yet tender,
Speak their fond fare-well.
Nita! Juanita!—”