er all, it was very hard to tell a lie, she discovered.

"There's something I like about this horse," said Belle, running her
plump white hand down the nose of Rab. "He's neighborly, anyway. He
brought you here against your will, I can see that. And now he's here
he sort of takes it for granted you'll be friendly and stop a while.
Don't you think you ought to be as friendly as your horse, honey?"

"I--I am friendly. I--I always wished I could come and see you. But
mother--mother doesna visit much among the neighbors; she--she's
always busy."

"I don't visit much, myself," said Belle dryly. "But that ain't saying
I can't be friendly. Come on in, and we'll have some lemonade."

Sheer astonishment brought Mary Hope down from her horse. All her life
she had taken it for granted that lemonade was sacred to the Fourth of
July picnics, just as oranges grew for Christmas trees only. She
followed Belle dumbly into the house, and once inside she remained
dumb with awe at what seemed to her to be the highest pinnacle of
grandeur.

There was the piano with a fringed scarf draped upon its top, and
pictures in frames standing upon the scarf in orderly rows. There were
many sheets of music,--and never a hymn book. There were great chairs
with deep upholstery which Mary observed with amazement was not red
plush, nor even blue plush, yet which appealed to her instincts for
beauty. There was no center table with fringed spread and family album
and a Bible and a conch shell. Instead there was a long table before a
window--a table littered with all sorts of things: a box of revolver
cartridges, a rifle laid down in the middle of scattered newspapers,
a bottle of oil, more music, a banjo, a fruit jar that did duty as a
vase for wild flowers, a half-finished, braided quirt and four silver
dollars lying where they had been carelessly flung down. To Mary Hope,
reared in a household where dollars were precious things, that last
item was the most amazing of all. The Lorrigans must be rich,--as rich
as they were wicked. She thrilled anew at her own daring.

Belle brought lemonade, wonderful lemonade, with an egg beaten to
yellow froth and added the last minute. Mary Hope sipped and marveled.
After that, Belle played on the piano and sang songs which Mary Hope
had never heard before and which she thought must be the songs the
angels sang in Heaven, although there was nothing to suggest harps or
hallelujahs. Love songs they were, mostly. The