epresented her afternoon's work, she smiled with
gentle derision for the mental picture she had carried all those years
of the wealthiest man in Boltonwood.

The paternal, almost bewildering familiar cordiality with which he had
greeted her and the pompously jovial urgency of the invitation which
he had come to deliver in person, urging acceptance upon her because
she "saw entirely too little of the young folks of the town," was
hardly in accord with the childish recollection she had carried with
her, year after year, of a purple faced, cursing figure who leaned
over the rickety old fence that bounded the garden, shook his fists in
John Anderson's mildly puzzled face and roared threats until he had to
cease from very breathlessness.

A far different Judge had bowed low before her that afternoon when she
answered the measured summons at the door--a sleek, twinkling,
unctuously solicitous, far more portly Judge Maynard--and Dryad
Anderson, who could not know that he had finally come to agree with
the rest of the village that he might "catch more flies with molasses
than with vinegar," and was ordering his campaign accordingly, flushed
in painful memory for the half-clad, half-starved little creature that
had clung to John Anderson's rusty coat-tails that other day and
glared black, bitter hate back at the man beyond the fence.

Leaning against the table there in the half light of the room, a slow
smile curled back the corners of her lips, still childishly quizzical
in contrast with that slim roundness of body which was losing its
boyish litheness in a new slender fullness that throbbed on the
threshold of womanhood. She smiled deprecatingly as she lifted one
hand to search in the breast of the blouse that was always just enough
outgrown to fail of closing across her throat, and drew out the thing
which the Judge had delivered with every possible flourish, barely a
few hours back.

Already the envelope was creased and worn with much handling, but the
square card within, thickly, creamily white, was still unspotted. As
if it were a perishably precious thing her fingers drew it with
infinite care from its covering, and she leaned far across the table
to prop it up before her where the light fell brightest. Pointed chin
cupped in her palms, she lay devouring with hungry eyes the words upon
its polished surface.

"---- requests the pleasure of," she picked up the lines which she
already knew by rote; and then, "Miss Drya