She looked at Laura. With her usually pale face aflame, her eyes fastened on Serena as she floated around like a bit of milkweed silk, Laura was playing, not looking at the keys, her fingers guided by instinct. And when the waltz was ended at the clapping of the little dancing mistress's hands, Laura's face bowed suddenly forward, dropped into her hands, and she burst out crying tempestuously.
"My dear, what is it?" cried Mrs. Stewart, frightened, as she hastened to her. Serena ran over to the piano also. "I must take care of her, because she is lovely Miss Margery's sister," she said. And she gravely put one of her tiny hands over Laura's clasped ones and stroked it.
"There isn't anything the mat-matter," sobbed Laura, struggling to control herself. "Only that was so beautiful."
"Yes, dear; that was a charming waltz," said poor little Mrs. Stewart trying to meet the occasion. "I don't remember hearing it before."
"You never did," grieved Laura. "That is just it. I made it up. And now nobody can ever hear it again, because I played it and played it, in a dream. And it was so beautiful! It was your waltz, Serena, it was the Waltz of the Lost Cousins."
Mrs. Stewart looked dismayed, as well she might, lacking the clue to Laura's idea. "Did you really improvise that pretty waltz, Laura?" she asked.
"Yes, thinking of Serena, and what she doesn't know," returned mysterious Laura. "I am all right now. Shall I play another dance?"
"If you please, dear, the lanciers. We always end with a square dance, and a lively chassé which I call 'good-night,'" replied Mrs. Stewart. "There is your sister Happie, come up for you."
"I should like to invent a dance for you—Serena alone, and then with all the other children, like a song and its chorus. I think I should call it the Dance-of-the-Thistle-Down," said Laura. "Serena is so little, and so light, and so white. Please let me have the lanciers music, Mrs. Stewart."