Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/130

118 idyll into a roaring farce. Had she herself realized to the full this faculty, Carlotta would have been highly delighted. Next to finding "a meal-ticket," she enjoyed nothing so much as "queering things," "crabbing anyone's act." It would have pleased her rarely to know that she had given this grotesque touch to so lovely a setting, and so threatened even the solemnities that were to be celebrated that evening. To Sally the former distortion would have been the sacrilege, the latter wouldn't have mattered much—it was farce enough already.

In a dull apathy she turned from the window and tried to interest herself in the preparations for the reception to follow the ceremony,—the final dusting of bric-a-brac, the making of salads and sandwiches. There was this much of consolation,—her Aunt Abigail had laid aside her soul's stays and whalebones, and, thinking more of satin and chiffons and her social prominence of the evening, was all smiles and approval, for once.

As she passed to and fro in the kitchen, the girl noticed on the windowsill the big blue bowl that had once held the magic golden flood. And the dream came back—the shining islands, floating, beckoning, vanishing, on the sun-smitten sea. But they had indeed slipped over its blue rim.

The dream had vanished with them. The blue bowl held no magic now, only a pool of yeast and potato sponge, which Aunt Abigail had not forgotten even in the importance of the night's event—a mess, not golden at all, but dreary and grey. And so forever would be the sea.