ing up the fragments that remained of the
entertainment, Hepsey broke forth:

"If I don't set that young woman down in her place where she belongs
before I've done, I've missed my guess: 'Please announce Miss Virginia
Bascom,' indeed! If that isn't sauce, I'm the goose."

"Oh never mind, Mrs. Burke," soothed Betty in a low voice; "she'll
soon realize that we're doing things in good old country style, and
haven't brought any city ways with us to Durford. I dare say she
thought----"

"Thought nothin'!" replied the exasperated Hepsey. "I'll thought her,
with her high looks and her proud stomach, as the psalmist says. I'd
like--oh, wouldn't I just like to send up a nice little basket of
these left-over victuals to Ginty, 'with Mrs. Maxwell's regards.'"

She laughed heartily, but Betty was determined not to let herself
dwell on anything so trivial, and soon, by way of changing the
subject, she was putting Nickey up to the idea of forming a boy-scout
corps, which, as she added, could present the village with a
thoroughly versatile organization, both useful and ornamental.

"Gee," remarked Nickey, who quickly saw himself captaining a body of
likely young blades, "that'd be some lively corpse, believe me. When
can we start in, Mrs. Maxwell?"

"You must ask Mr. Maxwell all about that, Nickey," she laughed.

"But not now," interposed his mother. "You come along with me this
minute, and let Mr. Maxwell have a bit of peace; I know how he just
loves these teas. Good night, all!" she called as she departed with
her son under her wing.

"Donald! Wasn't it all fun--and weren't they all splendid?" Betty
glowed.

"More fun than a barrel of Bascoms--monkeys, I mean," he corrected
himself, laughing at Betty's shocked expression.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XII

HOUSE CLEANING AND BACHELORHOOD

Apart from Mrs. Burke, there was no one in the town who so completely
surrendered to Mrs. Maxwell's charms as Jonathan Jackson, the Junior
Warden. Betty had penetration enough to see, beneath the man's rough
exterior, all that was fine and lovable, and she treated him with a
jolly, friendly manner that warmed his heart.

One day she and Mrs. Burke went over to call on Jonathan, and found
him sitting in the woodshed on a tub turned bottom upwards, looking
very forlorn and disconsolate.

"What's the matter, Jonathan? You look as if you had committed the
unpardonable sin," Hepsey greeted him.

"No, it 'aint me," Jonathan repli