together in her
lap. "What's the matter? Do I look--queer?"

He answered shortly:

"You're all right."

They sat watching the crowd file in. Suddenly Hughie exclaimed in
obvious relief:

"There's Teeters, and Maggie Taylor and her mother! Wait here--I'll
bring them over."

He went up to them with assurance, for their friendliness and
hospitality had been marked upon the several occasions that he had
accompanied Teeters, who always had some transparent excuse for stopping
at their ranch.

Mrs. Taylor, with her backwoods' conceit and large patronizing manner,
had been especially amusing to Hughie, but now in this uncomfortable
situation she looked like a haven in a storm as he saw her towering by
nearly half a head above the tallest in the crowd.

It was Mrs. Taylor's proud boast that she came of a race of giants. Even
upon ordinary occasions she bore a rather remarkable resemblance to a
mountain sheep, but to-night the likeness was further increased by a
grizzled bunch of frizzled hair that stood out on either temple like
embryo horns. Mrs. Taylor looked, as it were, "in the velvet." She wore
a brown sateen basque secured at the throat by a brooch consisting of a
lock of hair under glass. It was observed, also, that for the evening
she had removed the string which she commonly wore around her two large
and widely separated front teeth, and which were being drawn together by
this means at about the rate the earth is cooling off.

Mrs. Taylor dated events from the time "Mr. Taylor was taken," though
there was always room for doubt as to whether Mr. Taylor was "taken" or
quite deliberately went.

Miss Maggie was tall and sallow and was anticipating matrimony with an
ardor that had made the maiden one of the country's stock jokes, since
the sharer of it seemed to be of secondary importance to the fact. All
her spare change and waking hours were spent buying and embroidering
linen for the "hope chest" that spoke of her determined confidence in
the realization of her ambition.

The three greeted Hughie warmly. Miss Maggie flashed her dazzling teeth;
Teeters reached out and smote him with his fist between the shoulder
blades; Mrs. Taylor laid her hand upon his arm with her large smug air
of patronizing friendliness, and, stooping, beamed into his face.

"We were not looking for you here. Did Mr. and Mrs. Toomey come? Are you
alone?"

"I brought Katie Prentice--she's sitting over there."

"Oh!" Mrs. Taylor's ex