clasped hands.

"The Happy-Go-Luckys! You're sure you don't mean the Ku Klux Klan?
Hark, there's Kizzie coming to announce dinner. Come along and you can
tell me all about it while we eat."

She took his arm with a mock fine-lady air, and walked beside him with
mincing steps across the hall to the dining-room.

It was a square apartment with windows opening upon a green vista of
gardens, now shut away by latticed blinds, through which the fresh
spring air found way.

The bay window was filled with immense potted palms; another window led
to a balcony where baskets with myrtle and other vines hung round like
a heavy green curtain. The room was finished in light colored
woodwork. A square rug in a pattern of tiny green and white tiles
partly covered the polished floor; in the center stood a cosy round
table, whose snowy napery and old silver and china were lit by a bronze
lamp with an ornamental shade that resembled a gorgeous peony.

Seated opposite her Uncle, Alene, in her eagerness to relate her
afternoon's adventure, almost forgot to touch the tempting dishes which
Kizzie, the maid, served so deftly.

Her usually pale cheeks glowed and her eyes beamed brightly while she
told of her new friends and the club.

Mr. Dawson listened with flattering attention.

"You may, you shall, you must, join the Happy-Go-Luckys! As a society
for the prevention of loneliness to Peggy-Alone or any other forlorn
little girl, it strikes me as a good thing," he declared.

"Oh, Uncle, you're a dear old thing!"

"An article of _virtu_ as it were. Be careful how you handle me!"

Alene gave him a reproachful look.

"There, don't start that deadly stare again! I'm not insinuating
anything!"

His air of alarm amused Alene. She laughed merrily. Her joy over his
permission to join the Happy-Go-Luckys banished from her Uncle's mind
any doubts he may have had of her mother's approval. However, he knew
something of Alene's new friends, being personally acquainted with Mr.
Lee, whose work as a riverman allowed him little time at home, while
Mrs. Bonner was a widow who kept a small boarding house; both families,
though poor, were highly respectable.

"Since I'm left in charge of Alene, I'll use my own judgment, which
tells me that it's the very thing for her. She looks improved already
and I'll not let any snobbish question deprive her of happiness."
Which settled the matter there and then for all concerned.

*