ch occur so often in Flemish portraits of young
women. Some people thought her a trifle heavy, too mature and
positive to be called pretty, even though they admired her rich,
tulip-like complexion. Gladys never seemed aware that her looks
and her poverty and her extravagance were the subject of
perpetual argument, but went to and from school every day with
the air of one whose position is assured. Her musicianship gave
her a kind of authority in Frankfort.

Enid explained the purpose of their call. "Claude has got out his
old sleigh, and we've come to take you for a ride. Perhaps
Bayliss will go, too?"

Bayliss said he guessed he would, though Claude knew there was
nothing he hated so much as being out in the cold. Gladys ran
upstairs to put on a warm dress, and Enid accompanied her,
leaving Mrs. Farmer to make agreeable conversation between her
two incompatible guests.

"Bayliss was just telling us how you lost your hogs in the storm,
Claude. What a pity!" she said sympathetically.

Yes, Claude thought, Bayliss wouldn't be at all reticent about
that incident!

"I suppose there was really no way to save them," Mrs. Farmer
went on in her polite way; her voice was low and round, like her
daughter's, different from the high, tight Western voice. "So I
hope you don't let yourself worry about it."

"No, I don't worry about anything as dead as those hogs were.
What's the use?" Claude asked boldly.

"That's right," murmured Mrs. Farmer, rocking a little in her
chair. "Such things will happen sometimes, and we ought not to
take them too hard. It isn't as if a person had been hurt, is
it?"

Claude shook himself and tried to respond to her cordiality, and
to the shabby comfort of her long parlour, so evidently doing its
best to be attractive to her friends. There weren't four steady
legs on any of the stuffed chairs or little folding tables she
had brought up from the South, and the heavy gold moulding was
half broken away from the oil portrait of her father, the judge.
But she carried her poverty lightly, as Southern people did after
the Civil War, and she didn't fret half so much about her back
taxes as her neighbours did. Claude tried to talk agreeably to
her, but he was distracted by the sound of stifled laughter
upstairs. Probably Gladys and Enid were joking about Bayliss'
being there. How shameless girls were, anyhow!

People came to their front windows to look out as the sleigh
dashed jingling up and down th