"S-o?" conceded Solvei. "All that? It is not certainly of a poetry sound but 142more—later perhaps it will tell. All the rest is most easy looking.
"There was—some time" (she began) "when—when
meadows, groves, also streams,
"The earth and all things perfectly—ordinary
"To me did—did seems
"Ap-pareled—" I do not know that word and
here is another—" in ce—les—tial lightings,
"The——"
"Yes—anybody could see at once that you are a remarkable reader!" slashed Mrs. Tome Gallien's coolest, thinnest voice. "The picture it suggests of our long spring evenings together is——"
With a startled glance upward Solvei detected for the first time the actual glinting mockery in the older woman's eyes. "What is it?" she stammered. "What?" Still like some one more bewildered than hurt she struggled to her feet. "Even as from the first," she questioned, "is it that you are making the sport of me when I wish so hard to do 143the things that would please you? Through and through, is your heart then so cruel?" she demanded, "that it must make mockerings of the confused and the far-from-homes?"