“Sissy,” he said suddenly, “Do you remember the birthday parties I used to tell you about—­that I had given me when I was a boy living with the Allans?”

“Yes, indeed! and the cake with candles on it and all your best friends to wish you many happy returns.”

“Well, you know the nineteenth will be my birthday, and I want to have a party and a cake with candles and all our best friends here to wish you and me many happy returns of the happiest birthday we have spent together.  I only wish old Cy were here to play for us to dance!  I’d give something pretty to have him and his fiddle here, just to see what these sober-sided Penn folk would think of them.  My, wouldn’t they make a sensation in the ‘City of Brotherly Love!’” He began whistling as clearly and correctly as a piccolo the air of a recently published waltz.  After a few bars he sprang to his feet and—­still whistling—­quickly shoved the table and chairs to the wall, clearing the middle of the floor.  The tune stopped long enough for him to say,

“Come, Sweetheart, you must dance this with me.  My feet refuse to be still tonight!”—­then was taken up again.

The beautiful girl was in his arms in an instant and while “Muddie,” in her seat by the window, lifted her deep eyes from the work in her ever-busy hands and let them rest with a smile of indulgent bliss upon her “children,” they glided round and round the room to the time of the fascinating new dance.

At length they stopped, breathless and rosy, and the poet, with elaborate ceremony, handed his fair partner to a chair and began fanning her with “Muddie’s” turkey-tail fan.  He was in a glow of warmth and pleasure.  His wonderful eyes shone like lamps.  His pale cheeks were tinged with faint pink.  While fanning Virginia with one hand he gently mopped the pleasant moisture from his brow with the other.  Virginia’s eyes shot sunshine.  Her laughter bubbled up like a well-spring of pure joy.

“What would people say if they could see the great Mr. Poe—­the grand, gloomy and peculiar Mr. Poe—­the author of ’Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque,’ who’s supposed to be continually ’dropping from his Condor wings invisible woe?’” said she, as soon as she could speak.  The idea was so vastly amusing to her that she laughed until the shining eyes were filled with dew.

“If they could know half the pleasure I got out of that they wouldn’t say anything,” he replied.  “They would be dumb with envy.  I suppose it’s my mother in me, but I just must dance sometimes.  And this waltz!  In spite of all the prudes say against it, it is the divinest thing in the way of motion that ever was invented.  It’s exercise fit for the gods!”

He drew her to him and kissed her eyes and her cheeks and her lips.

“It was heavenly—­heavenly, Sis,” said he, “And I don’t suppose even the prudes could object to a man’s waltzing with his own wife.  I wonder will we ever dance to old Cy’s fiddle again?”