After the lemonade had all been drunk and most of the cakes eaten—for not even Christopher’s best efforts could quite empty the many plates—Letty offered to go back to her storytelling. She sat down on the grass with her back against a tree trunk and the twins curled themselves up contentedly on each side. Little Anna Parsons sat silent at her feet.

“Why are your stories always about people or fairies who sing beautifully?” asked Christopher unexpectedly, after Letty had related two or three tales of her own invention. “Do you sing, Letty?”

“I should like to. Oh, how I should like to!” sighed Letty, clasping her hands.

“Sing something to us now,” commanded Jane.

“I only know one or two songs,” replied Letty shyly, “and they are old songs. I think you children must know them already. I was never taught to sing,” she added quickly.

“Neither were we, except in Sunday-school, but we’ll sing for you, if you like,” said Christopher politely. “Sit up, Jane, and we’ll give her ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’”

“I think Letty’d like ‘There’s a Work for Me and a Work for You’ better,” objected Jane. “Her stories always have something about doing things in them.”

“Well, don’t the Christian Soldiers do things? They conquer the world and all that sort of thing. I like that song because you can make such a jolly lot of noise over it. It’s a regular shouter.”

“Boys always like to make a noise,” said Jane to Letty with an apologetic air. “But they are not the nicest kind of songs. I like lullabies and such things. Letty, don’t you know a lullaby? I guess you used to have to sing them to Mrs. Drake’s baby, didn’t you?”

Tears filled Letty’s eyes at the memory Jane’s words called up, of the cuddly, drowsy baby she had hushed to sleep so often.

“Yes, I used to sing Mrs. Drake’s baby to sleep. Shall I sing you that song?” she asked.

Once, on the memorable occasion of which she had told Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, Letty’s brother had taken her to a concert. One of the songs was DeKoven’s “Winter Lullaby.” The soft, crooning cadence of the song had thrilled Letty’s heart and she had listened with rapture. The song had been repeated in response to an encore and so, by careful attention, she had managed to memorize the words of the two verses. She sang it now to the children and as she began, grandmother and Mrs. Hartwell-Jones suddenly ceased their talk and sat listening.

When she had finished grandmother exclaimed in a low voice:

“Why, Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, how charming. What if you have discovered a genius!”

Tears came into Mrs. Hartwell-Jones’s eyes.

“So it seems to you, too, that she has a good voice?” she murmured eagerly. “I have wondered, and am most impatient to take her to the city to have her voice tried. I have heard her singing to herself now and then and although I know nothing about voice culture, I thought one or two notes appeared to have an unusual quality. And, dear Mrs. Baker, I shall never forget that it was really Jane who discovered Letty for me; her sweet kindliness for a ‘little sister in heaven.’ The child’s coming has made a great difference in my life already.”

“What is the song all about?” demanded Christopher of Letty, sitting upright in his curiosity. “What was the dream?”

“I don’t know what the dream was, but——”

“Why don’t you know? There must have been some sort of a dream, because the song says, ‘and tell the sky your dream.’ And who was talking, anyway?”

“Why, the sky was talking to the earth, I think.”

“And did the whole earth dream? And why did the sky want the earth to wake up and tell its dream to the sky? Why didn’t it say, ‘and tell me your dream’? And why in the world don’t they tell what the dream is? I think it’s a silly song, anyhow.”

“Kit Baker, you are a rude boy!” exclaimed his sister indignantly. “It isn’t a story, it’s a song. And songs don’t have to mean much, do they, Letty, as long as they are pretty.”

“Well, I think there ought to be another verse, telling the dream. Can’t you make up another verse as you go along, Letty? Seems to me I just must know what that dream was.”

“I guess there were lots and lots of dreams,” said Jane musingly. “All the flowers and birds dreamed. I could make up one dream; that an ugly little flower dreamed it was a lovely pink tulip, all pale and wide-open and satiny.”

“Huh, I’d rather be a red one, with yellow streaks down the middle. They’re lots showier and they live longer, too. The gardener that was putting our bulbs out last fall told me so.”

“But they’re beastly ugly. People don’t dream about being something ugly, even if it is strong and healthy. I’d rather not live so long, if I could only be so beautiful that people just had to stop and look at me. Wouldn’t you, Letty?”

“I don’t think looks matter so much,” said Letty practically, “if you keep your soul all nice and clean inside you. Then it shines out through your eyes and your smiles and makes you beautiful that way. Even cripples are beautiful if their souls are clean. My Sunday-school teacher, dear Miss Reese, told me that once. She was beautiful—very beautiful, and until then I had thought it was because she had nice white skin, pink cheeks, dimples and a pretty silk dress. But after she told me that, I knew it was just her angel soul looking out through her eyes.”

“What color were her eyes?” asked Christopher. “And could cross-eyed people look beautiful? I don’t see how they could on the outside, even if their souls were ever so clean.”

Grandmother and Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, who could not help overhearing this conversation, smiled at each other. Just then Joshua drove up in the carriage and everybody knew that it was time to go home.

“I understand that Sally has a birthday day after to-morrow,” said Mrs. Hartwell-Jones to Jane.

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, she will be three years old,” replied Jane, with all the pride of a doting mamma. “Uncle Gus gave her to me when I lost my first tooth. The fairies gave me a big silver dollar for the tooth, too. I wrapped it up in tissue-paper and put it under my pillow and they took it away in the night and left a shining silver dollar.”

“The blessed fairies! Now suppose you let me give Sally a birthday party? It would give Letty and me such pleasure to arrange it.”

Jane glowed with delight and accepted in both Sally’s name and her own, with alacrity. Christopher pricked up his ears. A doll’s birthday party did not appeal to him, even with the inducement of the “party.” Why would not that day be the very opportunity for his excursion with Billy and Jo Perkins?

“Please let the children come early, Mrs. Baker,” Mrs. Hartwell-Jones said to grandmother, “so that we may have a long afternoon together. Or, if you wish, Letty could drive out after them in the pony carriage.”

“Oh, thank you, I can send them quite easily. There is always some one driving into the village. But are you sure that you want them again so soon? You must not let them bother you.”

Grandmother did not want the twins to become a nuisance to any one, although in her secret heart of grandmother-hearts, she did not see how any one could see too much of Jane or Christopher.

Christopher said his good-bye very politely but very briefly.

“Please, grandmother,” he said, “will you wait for me a minute? I’ve got to speak to Bill Carpenter about some very important business.”

He bolted around the corner of the house and Jane’s lip quivered. She felt suddenly offended. What important business could Christopher have that he had not confided to her?

After their guests had gone, Mrs. Hartwell-Jones drew Letty down to a low stool beside her chair and said:

“My dear, has any one ever told you that you sing very well?”

Letty flushed crimson with surprise and delight.

“Oh, do I?” she cried. “I’d rather be able to sing than anything in this wide, wide world! It is so wonderful! But nobody ever told me I could sing. I have never had any lessons, you know.”

“And did you never sing to any of your teachers, in school or Sunday-school?”

“There was never any singing at school, except among a few of the bigger girls who took private lessons. And at Sunday-school I did not care for the singing much. They sang ‘regular shouters’ as Kit calls them,” she laughed.

“But sometimes in church—the church I told you about, where the little boys sang—I used to join in a little, sometimes. Once they were singing such a beautiful hymn. It was in the afternoon when there were not very many people in the church and the music was so lovely, all high and sweet and soft! I forgot for a minute where I was and sang out quite loud. The organist turned right around and looked at me. It frightened me terribly for I thought perhaps it was against the rules for any one but the small boys to sing and that some one might come and put me out. Indeed, I was afraid to go to church again for three or four Sundays, and when I did I always kept at the back of the church and did not sing again. But it could not have been against the rule, for a great many people joined in the singing and the organist did not look at them at all.”

Mrs. Hartwell-Jones did not tell her, what was so evident to herself, that the organist had been attracted, not by the child’s loud singing, but by the quality of her voice.

“Would you like to take singing lessons when we go back to town?” she asked presently.

“Oh, Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, would it be possible?”

“Not only possible, but it could be done very easily, my child. We shall talk about it some other time. Now, I have some plans to suggest for Sally’s birthday party. We must invite Anna Parsons and there must be a cake.”

“With candles,” agreed Letty, bringing her mind away from the singing with difficulty.

“I should like to make Sally a present, too,” went on Mrs. Hartwell-Jones. “Do you suppose we could buy a toy bed at the ‘store’? It would be nice to make a pretty bed for Sally to rest in when she comes to spend the afternoon.”

“And I could make the bedclothes. I love to sew,” cried Letty. “My mother taught me; hemming, overcasting—a great many things.”

“You must have had a very good, sweet mother, Letty.”

“Oh, yes!” breathed the girl, and her brown eyes filled suddenly with great tears.

The tears came to Mrs. Hartwell-Jones’s eyes, too, and she caught Letty to her arms in a long, close embrace.

“You have no mother and I have no little girl!” she whispered brokenly.

That evening Mrs. Hartwell-Jones wrote a very long letter to the lawyer in the city who had always managed her business for her. She glanced often at Letty as she wrote, but the little girl, busy over a puzzling problem in arithmetic, did not even dream of the wonderful ways in which that letter would change her life.