squeezing them, and nothing came. And when he wished to increase his volume of tone he would hold his hands still and slowly open his knees against swell-levers that were not there. This earnest futility gave so much amusement to Josie's youngest daughter that she had to be eyed out of the room by her mother.

Miss Pamela saved the day by a sudden inspiration, a recollection of what she had seen done by one of the leading sopranos from Indianapolis at a recital in the Star course at Peoria; Miss Pamela bent her pretty head and took from her juvenile breast one big red rose and held it in her hands while she sang. During the final stanza she plucked away its petals one by one and at the end let the shredded core fall upon the highly improbable roses woven in Josie's American Wilton carpet.

The girl's features and her attitudes were sheer Grecian; her accent was the purest Peoria. Now and then she remembered to insert an Italian "a," but she forgot to suppress the Italian "r," which is exactly the same as that of Illinois, but lacks its context or prestige. Her fresh, uncultivated voice was less faithful to the key than to her exquisite throat. To that same exquisite throat clung one fascinated eye of Mr. Maugans's, whose other orb angrily glowered at the music as if to overawe it. Had he possessed a third eye it might have guided his hands along the keyboard with more accuracy, but this detail could have affected the result but little, since his hands were incessantly compelled to clutch the incessantly deciduous music and slap it back on the rack.

Two stanzas had thus been punctuated before a shy old maid named Deborah Larrabee ventured to rise and stand at the piano, supporting the music. This compelled her to a closer proximity to a nice young man than she had known for so many years that she almost outblushed the young girl.

Deborah was afraid to look at anybody, yet when she cast her eyes downward she had to watch those emotional knees of Mr. Maugans's slowly parting in the crescendo that never came.

It was an ordeal for everybody–singer, pianist, and music-sustainer. But the audience was friendly, and the composer and the poet were too dead to gyrate in their distant graves. The song, therefore, had unmitigated success, and the words were so familiar that everybody knew pretty well what Pamela was driving at when she sang:

'Tis thuh lah-ha-ha strow zof sum-mah

Le-ef' bloo-oo-hoo-minnng uh-lone;

Aw lur lu-uh-uh vlee come-pan-yun

Zah-har fay-ay-yay dud ahnd gawn–

No-woe flow-wurr rof her kinn-drud,

No-woe ro-hose buh dis ni-eye-eye-eye-eye-eye

To re-fle-eh-ec' bah-cur blu-shuzz

Aw-hor gi-yi-hiv su-high for su-high!

 

There was hardly a dry eye or a protesting ear in the throng as she reached the climax:

Thu-us ki-yine-dlee I scat-tur-r-r

Thy-hi lea-heave zore thuh be-eh-eh-eh-eh-head

Whur-r-r thy may-hay-yate zuv thuh gar-r-dun-n-n-n

Lie-eye sceh-eh-entluss ahnd dead,

Whur-r thy may-YAH-YAH-yah thuh gah-dah

Lie-eye sceh-heh-hen-less ahnd-ah dead-ah.

 

The girl's mother was not hard to find among the applauding auditors. She looked like the wrecked last September's rose of which her daughter was the next June's bud. The softened mood of Birdaline and the tears that bedewed her cheeks gave her back just enough of the beauty she had had to emphasize how much she had lost.

And Josie, her quondam rival in the garden, was sweetened by melancholy, too. It was not hospitality alone, nor mere generosity, but a passing sympathy that warmed her tone as she squeezed Birdaline's arm and told her how well her daughter had sung.

A number of matrons felt the same attar of regret in the air. They had been beautiful in their days and in their ways, and now they felt like the dismantled rose on the floor. The common tragedy of beauty belated and foredone saddened everybody in the room; the old women had experienced it, the young women foresaw it, the men knew it as the destruction of the beauties they loved or had loved. Everybody was sad but Deborah Larrabee.

That homely little old spinster slipped impudently into the elbow of the piano–into the place still warm from the presence of Pamela–and she railed at the sorrow of her schoolmates, Josie and Birdaline. Her voice was as sharp as the old piano-strings:

"That song's all wrong, seems to me, girls. Pretty toon and nice words, but I can't make out why ever'body feels sorry for the last rose of summer. It's the luckiest rose in the world. The rest of 'em have bloomed too soon or just when all the other roses are blooming, or when people are sort of tired of roses. But this one is saved up till the last. And then, when the garden is all dying out and the bushes are just dead stalks and the other roses are wilted and brown and folks say, 'I'd give anything for the sight of a rose,' along comes this rose and–blooms alone!

"It's that way in my little yard. There's always a last rose that comes when the rest have gone to seed, and that's the one I prize. Seems to me it has the laugh on all the rest. The song's all wrong, I tell you, girls!"

This heresy had the usual success of attacks on sacred texts–the orthodox paid no heed to the value of the argument; they simply resented its impudence. But all they said to Deborah was an indulgent "That's so, Debby," and a polite "I never thought of that."

As Deborah turned away, triumphant, to repeat what she had just said to Mr. Maugans, she overheard Birdaline murmur to Josie in a kinship of contempt, "Poor old Debby!"

And Josie consented: "She can't understand! She never was a rose."

CHAPTER II

It was as if Birdaline and Josie had slipped a knife under Deborah's left slipped a knife under Deborah's left shoulder-blade and pushed it into her heart. She felt a mortal wound. She clung to the piano and remembered something she had overheard Birdaline say in exactly that tone far back in that primeval epoch when Debby had been sixteen–as sweetless a sixteen as a girl ever endured.

Deborah had not been pretty then, or ever before, or since. But she had been a girl, and had expected to have lovers to select a husband from.

Yet lovers were denied to Deborah. The boys had been fond of her and nice to her. For Deborah was a good fellow; she was never jealous or exacting. She was jolly, understood a joke, laughed a lot, and danced well enough. She never whined or threatened if a fellow neglected her or