"We can stop by and get Mark Morgan and Nell, and I believe Harriet

Henderson will come along, if everybody asks her--all the men, I mean,"

Letitia added with enthusiasm to match Billy's. Harriet Henderson is the

latest emerged widow in Goodloets and consequently is most interesting

to the masculine world at present.

"Let's start now, so as to give the chicken plenty of time to get into

the frying pan and over the fire," said Hampton, who is always the

practical member to bring up the details of any situation.

"I'm just from the tennis courts and I'll have to stop to dress, I'm

afraid," said Letitia meekly, as if she felt sure of a storm of

remonstrance.

"People don't dress to dance these days, Letitia," said Billy, with the

greatest innocence of mien and expression, a manner he always uses in

speaking to Letitia's rather literal directness and in which he delights

greatly. "They undress. You are unclothed enough as to ankles and if you

roll the sleeves of your tennis shirt to your shoulders, take off your

collar and tuck in the flaps, it will be enough to satisfy our cravings

for fashionable and suitable attire. We really want fried chicken rather

than chicken--"

"That will do, Billy," Letitia answered him with gentle firmness.

"That was just what I remarked, Letitia dear. That will do, for we want

chicken dressed with cream gravy and don't care about any swathed in

chiffon. And furthermore--"

"Do hush, Billy; look who's coming," Jessie interrupted him, and there

before my eyes I saw my entire group of friends begin to preen

themselves into new beings. Letitia smoothed down her skirts a fraction

of an inch, rolled down her sleeves another fraction and pushed back

into her braids a brown lock that was rioting across her brow. Jessie

shook out her muslin ruffles, reefed a fold of net higher across her

neck, and pinned it in place with a jeweled pin, while Hampton's and

Billy's and Cliff's expressions and poses of countenance and bodies

suddenly fell into lines of decorum.

"Great Smokes! We all forgot it was prayer meeting to-night, and it'll

be no trotting the fox for ours," Billy groaned, while he rose to his

feet with a smile of angelic sweetness. "Hello, Parson! We were just

beginning to think about you," was his greeting to the Sacred Jaguar who

had come through the garden and around the house. I felt sure that he

had heard Billy's plaint of disappointment about the dance, for there

was a quick glint of the amethysts as he halted and stood on the walk

below us and smiled up at us.

"I welcomed Miss Powers for breakfast, and now I find I want to come

over and do it again for tea," he said, and as I was perfectly cool,

sober and in my right mind at the moment he spoke, I had to concede that

his voice was the most wonderful I had ever heard, and something in me

made me resent it as well as the curious veneer that had spread over my

friends at his entry upon the scene. There they stood and sat, six

perfectly rational, fairly moral, representative free and equal

citizens, cowed by the representative of something that they neither

understood nor cared about, and it made me furious. They all wanted to

go to the Club to dance, to do the natural, usual, perfectly harmless

thing, and they were being constrained. If they had wanted to go to the

prayer meeting as they wanted to dance, they would have been natural and

joyful and eager about it.




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