showed he was making good.

The hospitality they were accepting was, of course, his own Nancy's, and
to be strictly honourable he should have defended everything, but with
certain definite reservations in his mind he replied, "Deadly."

"That dreadful old creature over there actually eyed me when I smoked
that last cig." The dreadful old creature was Mrs. Conover, who found it
difficult to reconstruct herself to the present century. "I should
think it would be awfully stupid living here. Now, isn't it really?"

"No, it isn't half bad."

"Oh, I can see you're a highbrow, like all the rest of them. Personally,
I couldn't stand it. I'm too independent, I guess. What a sweet dog."
Clarence was before her, arrayed in the Woodbridge colours. "I love
dogs. I've the sweetest little Boston bull bitch at home. She won a
silver flask for me last year." She was examining Clarence with the eye
of a practised dogwoman. "Do you know anything about Airedales?" Tom
didn't. "I suspect his tail is wrong," she said. "Now run along,
sweetie," she called to Clarence; "momma can't have a baby with wrong
tail." Clarence received this incredulously, but a complication was
averted by the arrival of Nancy. "We were just criticizing your dog, my
dear. Why don't you have his tail fixed?"

"Why, what's the matter with it?" asked Nancy. She hated the thought of
anything having happened to Clarence.

"Why, it's too long. You should have two inches at least cut off." The
picture of Clarence going around with his tail done up in a bandage was
a delightful one, and Nancy laughed.

Lily appealed to Tom. "Isn't she heartless?" But before Tom could answer
the slightly embarrassing question, the cruel one announced that they
had better be on their way, as the race started at five and it was then
half-past four. So they hustled into the Whitman motor and drove to
Center, where the new observation train was already filling.

The race with Hartley was always one of the great spring events, but the
new observation train made it more of an event than ever. People gloated
over it as though they had never seen a train before, much to the
amusement of Lily, whose attendance at New London had been frequent.
Many paused admiringly at the engine and, as they passed on up the line
of a dozen cars, loudly proclaimed their admiration of the entire
arrangement. "They are just like prairie schooners," said one young man,
to Lily's huge delight, for she had never be