ne gentlemen with
orders, whom your fancy conjures up for her," said I crisply, for her
words stung. They found an echo in my own heart.

"Love her? Oh, but of course! But--love counts for very, very little
in the world which claims Mary Virginia now, Armand. Ambition stifles
him." I was silent. I knew.

As for John Flint, he looked at that photograph and turned red.

"Good Lord! To think I had nerve to send _her_ a few butterflies last
year ... told _her_ to play like they meant more! I somehow couldn't
get the notion in my head that she'd grown up.... I never could think
of her except as a sort of kid-angel, because I couldn't seem to bear
the idea of her ever being anything else but what she was. Well ...
she's not, any more. And I've had the nerve to give a few insects to
the Queen of Sheba!"

"Bosh!" said Laurence, sturdily. "She ought to be glad and proud to
get that tray, and I'll bet you Mary Virginia's delighted with it.
She's her father's daughter as well as her mother's, please. As for
Appleboro not being good enough for her, that's piffle, too, p'tite
Madame, and I'm surprised at you! Her own town is good enough for any
girl. If it isn't, let her just pitch in and help make it good enough,
if she's worth her salt. Not that Mary Virginia isn't scrumptious,
though. Lordy, who'd think this was the same kid that used to bump my
head?"

"She turns heads now, instead of bumping them," said my mother.

"Oh, she's not the only head-turner Appleboro can boast of!" said the
young man grandly. "We've always been long on good-lookers in
Carolina, whatever else we may lack. They're like berries in their
season."

"But the berry season is short and soon over, my son: and there are
seasons when there are no berries at all--except preserved ones,"
suggested my mother, with that swift, curious cattiness which so often
astounds me in even the dearest of women.

"Dare you to tell that to the Civic League!" chortled Laurence. "I'll
grant you that Mary Virginia's the biggest berry in the patch, at the
height of a full season. But look at her getup! Don't doodads and
fallals, and hen-feathers in the hair, and things twisted and tied,
and a slithering train, and a clothesline length of pearls and such,
count for something? How about Claire Dexter, for instance? She mayn't
have a Figure like her Aunt Sally Ruth, but suppose you dolled Claire
up like this? A flirt she was born and a flirt she will die, but isn't
she a per