Barry's to receive her protegee provided Ben
could bring her. The two ladies were sitting out under the trees
waiting. Miss Mehitable had obeyed Ben, and some days since had given
Mrs. Barry the young girl's story, and that lady had received it
courteously and with the tempered sympathy which one bestows on the
absolutely unknown.

Miss Upton's excitement when she heard the humming of the aeroplane and
saw it approaching in the distance baffles description. She had been
forcing herself to talk on other subjects, perceiving clearly that her
hostess was what our English friends would term fed up on the subject of
the girl with the fanciful name; but now she clasped her plump hands and
caught her breath.

"Well, she ain't killed, anyway," she said. She longed to rush back to
the landing-place, but instinctively felt that such action on the part
of a guest would be indecorous. She hoped Mrs. Barry would suggest it,
but such a move was evidently far from that lady's thought. She sat in
her white silken gown, with sewing in her lap, the picture of unruffled
calm.

Miss Upton swallowed and kept her eyes on the approaching plane. "She
ain't killed, anyway," she repeated.

"Nor Ben either," remarked Mrs. Barry, drawing the fine needle in and
out of her work. "He is of some importance, isn't he?"

"Oh, do you suppose he got her, Mrs. Barry?" gasped Miss Mehitable.

"Ben would be likely to," returned that lady, who had been somewhat
tried by her son's preoccupation in the last few days and considered the
adventure a rather annoying interlude in their ordered life.

"Why don't she say let's go and see! How can she just set there as cool
as a cucumber!" thought Miss Mehitable, squeezing the blood out of her
hands.

The plane descended, the humming ceased. Miss Upton sat on the edge of
her chair looking excitedly at the figure in white who embroidered
serenely. Moments passed with the tableau undisturbed; then:

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed Miss Mehitable, still holding a rein over herself,
mindful that she was not the hostess.

Mrs. Barry looked up. She was a New Englander of the New Englanders,
conservative to her finger tips. Ben was her only son, the light of her
eyes. If what she saw was startling, it can hardly be wondered at.

There came through the pink cloud of the apple blossoms her aviator son
looking handsomer than she had ever beheld him, leading a girl in
white-fringed crepe that clung in soft folds to her slendern