over, ever again," I said as I bent over him. "Your
father is the best man in the world, and you must never, never leave
him."

"I bet I will, when I get big enough to kill a bear," answered Billy
decidedly. "Say, do you reckon Mamie saved even a little piece of that
cake? I 'spect I had better go see," and he slipped out of my arms and
was gone before I could hold him.

It _is_ a lonely house across the garden with the big and the tiny
man in it all by themselves! And tears, from another corner of my heart
entirely, rose to my eyes at the thought, but they, too, never fell, for
I heard Mrs. Johnson calling and I had to run down quick and see what
new delicacy had arrived for my party.

Uncle Thomas Pollard had sent me a quart bottle of his private stock
with the message to put the mint to soak just one hour and twenty
minutes before the men came. I made room for it beside the case of
champagne on the cellar shelf and wondered how they would stand it all.
We don't have champagne often in Hillsboro, and when we do nobody seems
to want to cut down on the juleps, consequently--well, nothing ever
really happens! However, it must have been the champagne that made Tom
act as he did. He was never like that before.

Somehow I didn't enjoy dressing to-night for my dinner as I did for the
dance, and when I was through I stood before the mirror and looked at
myself a long time. I was very tall and slim and--well, I suppose I
might say regal in that amethyst crepe with the soft rose-point, but I
looked to myself about the eyes as I had been doing for years when I put
on my Sunday clothes to go to church with Mr. Carter. He was always in a
hurry and I didn't care about looking at myself in the mirror anyway;
nobody else ever looked at me and what was the use? And to-night that
Rene triumph made me feel no different from one of Miss Hettie Primm's
conceptions that I had been wearing for ages with indifference and total
lack of style. I shrugged my shoulder almost out of the dress with what
I thought was sadness, though it felt a trifle like temper, too, and
went on down into the garden to see if any of my flowers had a cheer-up
message for me.

But it was a bored garden I stepped into just as the last purple flush
of day was being drunk down by the night. The tall white lilies laid
their heads over on my breast and went to sleep before I had said a word
to them, and the nasturtiums snarled around my feet until they got my
slipp