ly fallen down in the struggle, and only needed
some one to help them up, give them a cool drink and chance for a
moment's rest? _Were_ the big and the little things so close? One's own
kind and the other kind just one kind, after all?

"I love winding roads," Katie was saying, after a long silence. "I
suppose the thing so alluring about them is that one can never be sure
just what is around the bend. When I was a little girl I used to pretend
it was fairies waiting around the next curve, and I have never--"

But she drew in her horse sharply, for the moment at a loss; for it was
not fairies, but Captain Prescott, riding smilingly toward them, very
handsome on his fine mount.

"It's--one of our officers," she said sharply. "I--I'll have to
present him."

"Oh please--_please_!" was the girl's panic-stricken whisper. "Let me get
out! I must! I can't!"

"You _can_. You must!" commanded Katie. And then she had just time for
just an imploring little: "For my sake."

He had halted beside them and Katie was saying, with her usual cool
gaiety: "You care for this day, too, do you? We're fairly steeped in it.
Ann,"--not with the courage to look squarely at her--"at this moment I
present your next-door neighbor. And a very good neighbor he is. We use
his telephone when our telephone is discouraged. We borrow his books and
bridles; we eat his bread and salt, drink his water and wine--especially
his wine--we impose on him in every way known to good neighboring. Yes,
to be sure, this is Miss Forrest of whom I told you last night."

As the Captain was looking at Ann and not seeming overpowered with
amazement, looking, on the other hand, as though seeing something rarely
good to look at, Katie had the courage to look too. And at what she saw
her heart swelled quite as the heart of the mother swells when the child
speaks his piece unstutteringly. Ann was _doing_ it!--rising to the
occasion--meeting the situation. Then she had other qualities no less
valuable than looking Florentine. That thing of _doing_ it was a thing
that had always commanded the affectionate admiration of Katie Jones.

It was not what Ann did so much as her effective manner of doing nothing.
One would not say she lacked assurance; one would put it the other
way--that she seemed shy. It seemed to Katie she looked for all the world
like a startled bird, and it also seemed that Captain Prescott
particularly admired startled birds.

He turned and rode a little