seat and bade him do likewise. "You did see Uncle
Amy, didn't you? I saw you talking to him; but you ought to have come
earlier while there was a receiving-line ready for you. Now you'll have
to look around for everybody; you have to speak to my three aunts and
all my uncles and my father."

"I'll be glad to," declared Fred; and then realizing the absurdity of
his fervor in consenting to speak to the aunts and uncles he laughed.

"You're scared," said Phil. "And if you won't tell anybody I'm a little
bit scared myself, just because everybody tells me how grown-up I am."

The music struck up and a young cavalier--a college senior, who had
worshiped Phil since his freshman year--came to say that it was his
dance. She told him that she was tired and would have to be excused. He
wished to debate the question, but she closed the incident promptly and
effectively.

"I'm busy talking to Mr. Holton; and I can see you any time, Walter."

Walter departed crestfallen; she treated him as though he were still a
freshman. He was wearing his first dress-coat and the tallest collar he
could buy, and it was humiliating to be called Walter and sent away by a
girl who preferred to talk to a rustic-looking person in a cutaway coat
and a turnover collar with a four-in-hand tie.

Phil carried Fred off for a tour of the rooms, pausing to introduce him
to her father and to the three aunts, to whom she said how kind it was
of Fred to come; that he was the only person she had personally asked to
the party. And it was just like Phil, for years the loyal protector of
all the discards among the cats and dogs in town, to choose a clodhopper
for special attention. Kirkwood, who had forgotten Fred's existence,
greeted him in his pleasant but rather absent way.

The torrid Wabash Valley summers of many years had not greatly modified
the chill in Kirkwood's New England blood, and the isolation in which he
had lived so long had deepened his reserve. The scholarly stamp had not
been effaced by his abandonment of the academic life, and many of his
fellow-townsmen still addressed him as Professor Kirkwood. His joy
to-night lay in Phil's happiness; his heart warmed to the terms of
praise in which every one spoke of her. It touched his humor that his
daughter was in some degree a public character. Her escapades in
childhood and youth had endeared her to the community. In her battles
with the aunts public sympathy had been pretty generally with Phil.
"O