e steps and crossed the veranda and the
threshold of the front door in the same manner.

Julia stood before him.

"Noble _Dill_!" she exclaimed.

As for Noble, his dry throat refused its office; he felt that he might
never be able to speak to Julia again, even if he tried.

"Where in the world have you been all evening?" she cried.

"Why, Jew-Julia!" he quavered. "Did you notice that I was gone?"

"Did I 'notice'!" she said. "You never came near me all evening after
the first dance! Not even at supper!"

"You wouldn't--you didn't----" he faltered. "You wouldn't do anything
all evening except dance with that old Clairdyce and listen to him
trying to sing."

But Julia would let no one suffer if she could help it; and she could
always help Noble. She made her eyes mysterious and used a voice of
honey and roses. "You don't think I'd _rather_ have danced with him, do
you, Noble?"

Immediately sparks seemed to crackle about his head. He started.

"What?" he said.

The scent of heliotrope enveloped him; she laughed her silver
harp-strings laugh, and lifted her arms toward the dazzled young man.
"It's the last dance," she said. "Don't you want to dance it with me?"

Then to the spectators it seemed that Noble Dill went hopping upon a
waxed floor and upon Julia's little slippers; he was bumped and bumping
everywhere; but in reality he floated in Elysian ether, immeasurably
distant from earth, his hand just touching the bodice of an angelic
doll.

Then, on his way home, a little later, with his new hat on the back of
his head, his stick swinging from his hand, and a semi-fragrant Orduma
between his lips, his condition was precisely as sweet as the condition
in which he had walked to the party.

No echoes of "The Sunshine of Your Smile" cursed his memory--that
lover's little memory fresh washed in heliotrope--and when his mother
came to his door, after he got home, and asked him if he'd had "a nice
time at the party," he said:

"Just glorious!" and believed it.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was a pretty morning, two weeks after Julia's Dance; and blue and
lavender shadows, frayed with mid-summer sunshine, waggled gayly across
the grass beneath the trees of the tiny orchard, but trembled with
timidity as they hurried over the abnormal surfaces of Mrs. Silver as
she sat upon the steps of the "back porch." Her right hand held in
security one end of a leather leash; the other end of the leash was
fastened to a n