ge urged him. "It's too lovely to go in," he
said; "what's your hurry?"

Aunt Claudia, who was inexpressibly weary, felt that her father was
exceeding the bounds of necessary hospitality. She felt, too, that the
length of Dalton's first call was inexcusable. But she did not go to
bed. As long as Becky was there, she should stay to chaperon her.
With a sense of martyrdom upon her, Mrs. Beaufort sat stiffly in her
chair.

The Judge was talkative and brilliant, glad of a new and apparently
attentive listener. Becky had little to say. She sat with her small
feet set primly on the ground. Her hands were folded in her lap.
Dalton was used to girls who lounged or who hung fatuously on his
words, as if they had set themselves to please him.

But Becky had no arts. She was frank and unaffected, and apparently
not unconscious of Dalton's charms. The whole thing was, he felt,
going to be rather stimulating.

When at last he left them, he asked the Judge if he might come again.
"I'd like to look at those birds by daylight."

Becky, giving him her hand, hoped that he might come. She had been all
the evening in a sort of waking dream. Even when Dalton had been
silent, she had been intensely aware of his presence, and when he had
talked, he had seemed to speak to her alone, although his words were
for others.

"I saw you dancing," he said, before he dropped her hand.

"Oh, did you?"

"Yes."

Back of the house the dogs barked.

"Will you dance some time with me?"

"Oh, could I?"

"Why not?"

A moment later he was gone. The light of his motor flashed down the
hills like a falling star.

"I wonder what made the dogs bark," the Judge said as they went in.

"They probably thought it was morning," was Mrs. Beaufort's retort, as
she preceded Becky up the stairs.

IV

The dogs had barked because Randy after a quick drive home had walked
back to Huntersfield.

"Look here," he burst out as he and the Major had stood on the steps of
the Schoolhouse, "do you like him?"

"Who? Dalton?"

"Yes."

"He's not a man's man," the Major said, "and he doesn't care in the
least what you and I think of him."

"Doesn't he?"

"No, and he doesn't care for--stuffed birds--and he doesn't care for
the Judge, and he doesn't care for Mrs. Beaufort----"

"Oh, you needn't rub it in. I know what he's after."

"Do you?"

"Yes----"

The Major whistled softly a lilting tune. He had been called "The
Whistling Major"