"Won't you sing one for me now, Miss Page?" he asked. "I bought the song I wanted to-day," and going to the piano he unrolled and spread upon the music rack--"Ben Bolt"!
"But I only consented to sing once for Blanch," Alice replied, "and there are others here who I am sure can do much better."
"Come, please," he said coaxingly, "just this one for me." And then once more Alice touched the keys.
Back to a simply furnished parlor in Sandgate, with its lamp on the piano and open fire burning brightly as it had one year ago, went two of that company in thought, and maybe others there, whose youth had been among country scenes, were carried back to them by the singer's voice, and saw a by-way schoolhouse "and a shaded nook by a running brook," in fancy; or perhaps a little white stone in some grass-grown corner, where, "obscure and alone," lay a boyhood's sweetheart! For all the pathos of our lost youth trilled in the voice of Alice Page as she sang that old, old song of the long ago. And not one in that little audience but was enthralled by the winsome witchery of her voice, and for the moment was young again in thought and feeling. As for Mrs. Nason, when the guests had departed she turned to Alice, and taking her face in her hands exclaimed, "I want to kiss the lips that have brought tears to my eyes to-night."
The last evening of her visit she decided to spend with her brother, and when she came to bid adieu to her hostess, that much dreaded haughty mother had resolved herself into a charming old lady, who said: "Now I can see why my daughter went into raptures over some one who I hope will visit us again and stay much longer." It was a graceful tribute, and one that touched the motherless girl as few words could.
"It is odd, Bertie," she said to her brother that evening, when they were alone together, "how different people seem when one comes to know them. Now from one or two things which you have said, and an admission that Frank made a year ago, I felt I should be sure to hate his mother, and now I think she is perfectly lovely."
"So she is to those she likes," answered Albert, "but if you had not shown the tact you have, my dear sis, I am not sure you would now be praising her. You carried her heart by storm last evening, as well as the rest of the company, and you deserved it, for I never heard you sing so well."