ooking much better. For how
could Aunt Claudia know that everything that Becky ate was like sawdust
to her palate. She found herself talking and laughing a great deal, and
Truxton teased her.

After dinner she went up-stairs with Mary and showed her a new way to do
her hair, and found an entrancing wisp of a frock for Mary to wear.

"It will be great fun having the boarders from King's Crest. There are a
lot of young people of all kinds--and not many of them our kind, Mary."

Mary smiled at her. "I am not quite your kind, am I?"

"Why not? And oh, Mary, you are happy, happy. And you are lovely with
your hair like that, close to your head and satin-smooth."

Mary, surveying herself in the glass, gave an excited laugh. "Do you
know when I married Truxton I never thought of this?"

"Of what?" Becky asked.

"Of pretty clothes--and dances--and dinners. I just knew that he--loved
me, and that he had to leave me. But I don't suppose I could make the
world believe it."

"Truxton believes it, doesn't he, Mary?"

"Yes."

"And I believe it. And what do you care for the others? It is what we
know of ourselves, Mary," she drew a quick breath. "It is what we know
of ourselves----"

Becky was wearing the simple frock of pale blue in which George had seen
her on that first night when he came to Huntersfield.

"Aren't you going to change?" Mary asked.

"No. It is too much trouble." Becky was in front of the mirror. Her
pearls caught the light of the candles. Her bronze hair was a shining
wave across her forehead. "It is too much trouble," she said, again, and
turned from the mirror.

She had a dozen frocks that had come in the rosy hamper--frocks that
would have made the boarders open their eyes. Frocks that would have
made Dalton open his. But Becky had the feeling that this was not the
moment for lovely clothes. She felt that she would be cheapened if she
decked herself for George.

When the two girls went down-stairs Truxton was waiting for his wife. "I
thought you would never come," he said. He drew her within the circle of
his arm, and they went out into the garden. The Judge and Mrs. Beaufort
were on the porch. Becky sat on the step and leaned her head against
Aunt Claudia's knee.

"What in the world made you ask all those people over, Becky?" the Judge
demanded.

"Oh, they're great fun, Grandfather, and I felt like it."

"Have you planned anything for them to eat, Claudia?"

"Watermelons. Calvin has put a