hall be glad to
get home, Becky."

"But you look so lovely, Mary, and everybody seems so kind."

"They are, but underneath I am just plain--Mary Flippin. They know
that, and so do I, and it will take them some time to forget it."

There was an anxious look in Becky's eyes. "It seems to me that you
are feeling it more than the others."

"Perhaps. And I shouldn't have said anything. Don't let Truxton know."

"Has anyone said anything to hurt you, Mary?"

"No, but when I dance with the men, I can't speak their language. I
haven't been to the places--I don't know the people. I am on the
outside."

Becky had a sudden forlorn sense that things were wrong with the whole
world. But she didn't want Mary to be unhappy.

"Truxton loves you," she said, "and you love him. Don't let anything
make you miserable when you have--that. Nothing else counts, Mary."

There was a note of passion in her voice which brought a pulsing
response from Mary.

"It _is_ the only thing that counts, Becky. How silly I am to worry."

Her young husband was coming towards her--flushed and eager, a prince
among men, and he was hers!

As he sat down beside her, her hand sought his under the table.

He looked down at her. "Happy, little girl?"

"Very happy, lover."

III

Caroline Paine was having the time of her life. She wore a new dress
of thin midnight blue which Randy had bought for her and which was very
becoming; her hair was waved and dressed, and she had Major Prime as an
attentive listener while she talked of the past and linked it with the
present.

"Of course there was a time when the men drank themselves under the
tables. Everybody calls them the 'good old times,' but I reckon they
were bad old times in some ways, weren't they? There was hot blood,
and there were duels. There's no denying it was picturesque, Major,
but it was foolish for all that. Men don't settle things now by
shooting each other, except in a big way like the war. The last duel
was fought by the old fountain out there--one of the Merriweathers met
one of the Paines. Merriweather was killed, and the girl died of a
broken heart."

"Then it was Merriweather that she loved?"

"Yes. And young Paine went abroad, and joined the British army and was
killed in India. So nobody was happy, and all because there was,
probably, a flowing bowl at the harvest ball. I am glad they don't do
it that way now. Just think of my Randy stripped to his sh