Miss Amies had not, and begged me to take her away.
We heard later that Paul did not think much of the fireworks. He had seen fireworks that cost two thousand dollars. He had also seen a tin horn as large as one of the posts supporting the balcony; and he had been in Florida.
The air grew cooler. The girlish figures strolling on the veranda were half buried under snowy drifts of soft wraps. In the drawing-room some one was touching the strings of a harp with a master-hand. Below us the outlines of the yacht grew fainter and fainter, until the music and the fairy-ship faded together into night.
It was the evening of the second day. We were butterflies again, flitting down the stairway to our farewell dinner,—the male butterflies stiff in fine linen and broadcloth, the female butterflies a bewildering maze of "nun's veiling," muslin, satin, lace, embroidery, and roses. I longed for Georgiana Hexom and Jimmy. I felt that even in their prejudiced minds we should compare favorably with Mary Ann's Episcopal boarders. It had been a carnival-day. The forests had worn their richest green. Miss Hillard had worn her two most remarkable hats. The yacht had offered us a princely banquet. The waves of Bar Harbor had gently drifted us through a summer afternoon, and the morning clouds on Green Mountain had opened that we might look down from the summit on the glories of sea and land. From valley to mountain-top my chaperon's horn had sounded its note of rejoicing, until we sank it at last in the waters of a mountain-lake,—as a certain king of Thule once sank his golden goblet. The horn was sacred to the day.
Our farewell dinner ended in a dance. Alice wore the "thin white dress" mentioned in her letter, with a sweet supplement of wild roses. She gravely advised me not to be "too giddy," and disappeared on the arm of Mr. Paul Anderson, he having assured her in a tone of indirect compliment that the other little girls in the house danced like "wabbling lumps of dough."
Seven tall, solemn-looking men came into the ball-room and sat in a row, suggesting the seven wise men of Gotham. One of them, leaning forward, said a few words to Alice. I was filled with curiosity. But my chaperon, being obliged to leave the ball early on account of her inconvenient bed-hour, gave me no opportunity to question her.
Before breakfast we went to the Indian encampment. "Alice," I asked, "why did you speak to that gentleman last night? I mean one of the seven men who sat in a row."
"I didn't speak first," said Alice. "I shouldn't have spoken at all, only I wanted to find out something, and I thought if anybody would know he would."
"Why he more than the rest of us?"
"I think he was a United States senator," said Alice. "Paul says all the senators come here in the summer. Who else could those men be?"
I could only echo, "Who else, to be sure?"
Alice continued, "The one who spoke to me said to the next one, 'Look at those children: they represent the rising generation.' And then the man said to me, 'Little girl, is there anything you don't know?' And I said, 'Yes, sir.' And I asked him what absorption and extermination meant. And he put on his glasses, and said, 'Little girl, you'd better go to bed.' And he said to the other man, 'Isn't it an awful state of affairs when children talk like that?' I don't see anything awful about it."
"It was rather surprising and unexpected," I said. "Little girls don't usually ask such questions; at least, ordinary little girls don't."
"I wish you'd tell me, Narrowby. I couldn't get a chance to ask you before. It's on account of Nancy that I wish to know." Alice took a printed slip from a small pocket-diary, and I read,—
"The only alternative which civiliza-
