Chapter 4 - Page 2

'So will you be soon.'

'Why did you choose this place for our meeting, sir?' she asked,
looking around and acquiring confidence.

'Why did I choose it? Well, because in riding past one day I
observed a large hollow tree close by here, and it occurred to me
when I was last with you that this would be useful for our purpose.
Have you told your father?'

'I have not yet told him, sir.'

'That's very bad of you, Margery. How have you arranged it, then?'

She briefly related her plan, on which he made no comment, but,
taking her by the hand as if she were a little child, he led her
through the undergrowth to a spot where the trees were older, and
standing at wider distances. Among them was the tree he had spoken
of--an elm; huge, hollow, distorted, and headless, with a rift in its
side.

'Now go inside,' he said, 'before it gets any darker. You will find
there everything you want. At any rate, if you do not you must do
without it. I'll keep watch; and don't be longer than you can help
to be.'

'What am I to do, sir?' asked the puzzled maiden.

'Go inside, and you will see. When you are ready wave your
handkerchief at that hole.'

She stooped into the opening. The cavity within the tree formed a
lofty circular apartment, four or five feet in diameter, to which
daylight entered at the top, and also through a round hole about six
feet from the ground, marking the spot at which a limb had been
amputated in the tree's prime. The decayed wood of cinnamon-brown,
forming the inner surface of the tree, and the warm evening glow,
reflected in at the top, suffused the cavity with a faint mellow
radiance.

But Margery had hardly given herself time to heed these things. Her
eye had been caught by objects of quite another quality. A large
white oblong paper box lay against the inside of the tree; over it,
on a splinter, hung a small oval looking-glass.

Margery seized the idea in a moment. She pressed through the rift
into the tree, lifted the cover of the box, and, behold, there was
disclosed within a lovely white apparition in a somewhat flattened
state. It was the ball-dress.

This marvel of art was, briefly, a sort of heavenly cobweb. It was a
gossamer texture of precious manufacture, artistically festooned in a
dozen flounces or more.

Margery lifted it, and could hardly refrain from kissing it. Had any
one told her before this moment that such a dress could exist, she
would have said, 'No; it's impossible!' She drew back, went forward,
flushed, laughed, raised her hands. To say that the maker of that
dress had been an individual of talent was simply understatement: he
was a genius, and she sunned herself in the rays of his