"That last thing you played the other day—will you—will you tell me what it was?" went on their new companion, shyly.

"Why, that was Schumann's 'Träumerei,'" answered Marcia. "I love it, don't you?"

"Yes but I never heard it before; that is, I never remember hearing it, and yet—somehow I seemed to know it. I can't think why. I don't understand. It's as if I'd dreamed it, I think."

Marcia and Janet again exchanged glances. What a strange child this was, who talked of having "dreamed" music that was quite familiar to almost every one.

"Perhaps you heard it at a concert," suggested Janet.

"I never went to a concert," she replied, much to their amazement. And then, perceiving their surprise, she added:

"You see, I've always lived 'way off in the country, in just a little village—till now."

"Oh—yes," answered Janet, pretending enlightenment, though in truth she and Marcia were more bewildered than ever.

[Pg 40]

[Pg 40]

But by this time they had reached the little grocery-shop, and all proceeded inside while their new friend made her purchases. These she read off slowly from a slip of paper, and the grocer packed them in her basket. But when it came to paying for them and making change, she became entangled in a fresh puzzle.

"I think you said these eggs were a shilling?" she ventured to the grocer.

"Shilling—no! I said they were a quarter," he retorted impatiently.

"A quarter?" she queried, and turned questioning eyes to her two friends.

"He means this," said Marcia, picking out a twenty-five-cent piece from the change the girl held.

"Oh, thank you! I don't understand this American money," she explained. And Marcia and Janet added another query to their rapidly growing mental list.

On the way back home, however, she grew silent again, and though the girls chatted back and forth about quite impersonal matters,—the crowded streets, the warm weather, the[Pg 41] sights they passed,—she was not to be drawn into the conversation. And the nearer they drew 

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