strangely assorted pair--entered the long
room, festivities were already in progress; Negro fiddlers were reeling
off dance music, and Miss Lydia was trying to teach some of her club
members the two-step. Her younger brother, Hartley Sessions, was gravely
piloting a girl down the room in what was supposed to be that popular
dance, and two young men from Watauga, for whom he had vouched, stood
ready for Miss Sessions to furnish them with partners, when she should
have encouraged her learners sufficiently to make the attempt. Round the
walls sat the other girls, and to Johnnie's memory came those words of
Mandy's, "You dance--if you can."

Johnnie Consadine certainly could dance. Many a time back in the
mountains she had walked five miles after a hard day's work to get to a
dance that some one of her mates was giving, tramping home in the dawn
and doing without sleep for that twenty-four hours. The music seemed
somehow to get into her muscles, so that she swayed and moved exactly in
time to it.

"That's the two-step," she murmured to her partner. "I never tried it,
but I've seen 'em dance it at the hotel down at Chalybeate Springs. I
can waltz a little; but I love an old-fashioned quadrille the best--it
seems more friendly."

Gray Stoddard was talking to an older woman who had come with her
daughter--a thin-bodied, deep-eyed woman of forty, perhaps, with a
half-sad, tolerant smile, and slow, racy speech. A sudden touch on his
shoulder roused him, as one of the young men from town leaned over and
asked him excitedly:

"Who's that girl down at the other end of the room, Gray?--the stunning
blonde that just came in? She's got one of the mill girls with her."

Gray looked, and laughed a little. Somehow the adjectives applied to
Johnnie did not please him.

"Both of them work in the mill," he said briefly. "The one you mean is
Johnnie Consadine. She's a remarkable girl in more ways than merely in
appearance."

"Well, take me down there and give me an introduction," urged the youth
from Watauga, in a tone of animation which was barred from
Uplift affairs.

"All right," agreed Gray, getting to his feet with a twinkle in his eye.
"I suppose you want to meet the tall one. I've got an engagement for the
first dance with Miss Consadine myself."

"Say," ejaculated the other, drawing back, "that isn't fair. Miss
Sessions," he appealed to their hostess as umpire. "Here's Gray got the
belle of the ball mortgaged for all her