r twice she remembered those far-away Chippewa golf-club dances.
She was the girl who used to sit there against the wall! She used to
look away with pretended indifference when a man crossed the floor
toward her--her heart leaping a little. He would always go to the girl
next to her. She would sit there with a set smile on her face, and the
taste of ashes in her mouth. And those shoddy tulle evening dresses her
mother had made her wear! Girlish, she had called them. A girl in
thick-lensed glasses should not wear tulle evening frocks with a girlish
note. Elizabeth had always felt comic in them. Yet there she had sat,
shrinking lest the odious Oakley, of the fat white fingers and the
wheezy breath, should ask her to dance.

She reflected, humorously, that if the miles of dancing she had done in
the past year were placed end to end, as they do it in the almanac's
fascinating facts, they must surely reach to Mars and return.

Whenever the hut door opened to admit a tall, graceful, lean brown
figure her heart would give a little leap and a skip. As the door did
this on an average of a thousand times daily her cardiac processes might
be said to have been alarmingly accelerated.

Sometimes--though they did not know it--she and Chug were within a half
hour's ride of each other. In all those months they never once met.

Elizabeth Weld came back to Chippewa in June. The First National Bank
Building seemed to have shrunk; and she thought her mother looked old in
that youthful hat. But she was glad to be home and said so.

"It has been awful here," said the Widow Weld. "Nothing to do but sew at
the Red Cross shop; and no sugar or white bread."

"It must have been," agreed Elizabeth.

"They're giving a dance for you--and dinner--a week from Saturday, at
the golf club. In your honour."

"Dance!" Elizabeth closed her eyes, faintly. Then, "Who is?"

"Well, Mr. Oakley's really giving it--that is, it was his idea. But the
club wanted to tender some fitting--"

"I won't go."

"Oh, yes, you will."

Elizabeth did not argue the point. She had two questions to ask.

"Have the boys come back?"

"What boys?"

"The--the boys."

"Some of them. You know about dear Harry Hatton, of course. Croix de--"

"What have they done with the Khaki Club, where they used to give the
dances?"

"Closed. Long ago. There was some talk of keeping it open for a
community centre, or something, but it fell through. Now, Betty, you'll
have to hav