buthday. Pity it hadn't a-happened to be the same day, then maybe Mis'
Haven mought a give you somethin' like Mis' Alice give Jintsey's boy."

John Jay had that same thought all the rest of the way to Rosehaven,
but after they entered the brilliantly illuminated grounds he seemed to
stop thinking altogether. It was a sight beyond all that his wildest
imaginings had pictured. He did not recognize the place. All the
lanterns were lighted now, hanging like strings of stars around the
porches, and from tree to tree. Violins played softly, somewhere out of
sight, and everywhere on the night air was the breath of myriads of
roses. Handsomely dressed people passed in and out of the house, and
across the lawn. The light, the music, and the perfume made the place
seem enchanted ground to the bewildered little John Jay, and when he
reached the illuminated fountain just in front of the house, he clung to
Mammy's skirts as if he had suddenly found himself in some strange Eden,
and was frightened by its unearthly beauty.

The fountain into which, only that morning, he had thrust his hot little
face for a drink, now seemed bewitched. It was no longer a flow of
sparkling water, but of splashing rainbows. From palest green to ruby
red, from amethyst to amber it paled and deepened and glowed.

All the evening he moved about like one in a dream. The tableaux with
their shifting scenes of knights and ladies and marble statuary were
burned on his memory as heavenly visions. He knew nothing of the tinsel
and flour and red lights which produced the effect. He stood about as
Miss Hallie told him: he held a horse in one tableau, and posed as a
bronze statue in another. Then he went back to the fountain, and sat
dreamily watching it, while the violins played again,--in the long
parlors this time, where the dancing had begun.