yuh don'd haff every day at home." To point the
moral she reached for a plate of fluted and iced molasses cakes.

"I _love_ prune pies," asserted Miss Bridger, and laughed at the
snorts which came from either side.

Billy felt himself four inches taller just then. "Give me stewed
prairie-chicken," he stooped to murmur in her ear--or, to be exact, in
the blue bow on her hat.

"Ach, you folks didn'd ought to come to a picnic!" grunted the fatter
woman in disgust.

The two who had the secret between them laughed confidentially, and
Miss Bridger even turned her head away around so that their eyes could
meet and emphasize the joke.

Billy looked down at the big, blue bow and at the soft, blue ruffly
stuff on her shoulders--stuff that was just thin enough so that one
caught elusive suggestions of the soft, pinky flesh beneath--and
wondered vaguely why he had never noticed the beating in his throat
before--and what would happen if he reached around and tilted back her
chin and--"Thunder! I guess I've sure got 'em, all right!" he brought
himself up angrily, and refrained from carrying the subject farther.

It was rumored that the dancing would shortly begin in the schoolhouse
up the hill, and Billy realized suddenly with some compunction that he
had forgotten all about Dill. "I want to introduce my new boss to
yuh, Miss Bridger," he said when they had left the table and she was
smoothing down the ruffly blue stuff in an adorably feminine way. "He
isn't much just to look at, but he's the whitest man I ever knew. You
wait here a minute and I'll go find him"--which was a foolish thing
for him to do, as he afterward found out.

For when he had hunted the whole length of the grove, he found
Dill standing like a blasted pine tree in the middle of a circle of
men--men who were married, and so were not wholly taken up with
the feminine element--and he was discoursing to them earnestly and
grammatically upon the capitalistic tendencies of modern politics.
Billy stood and listened long enough to see that there was no hope of
weaning his interest immediately, and then went back to where he had
left Miss Bridger. She was not there. He looked through the nearest
groups, approached one of the fat women, who was industriously
sorting the remains of the feast and depositing the largest and most
attractive pieces of cake in her own basket, and made bold to inquire
if she knew where Miss Bridger had gone.

"Gone home after some prune p