dy, strolling, gipsy band up at the hotel; the dining-room floor is
all waxed and I'm asking for the first dance with the young and radiant
Mrs. Carter. Get into a glad rag and don't keep me waiting."

"Tom," I gasped!

"Oh, be a sport, Moll, and don't take water! You said you would wake up
this town, and now do it. It seems twenty instead of six years since I
had my arms around you to music and I'm not going to wait any longer.
Everybody is there and they can't all dance with Miss Chester."

That settled it--I couldn't let a visiting girl be danced to death. Of
course I had planned to make a dignified debut under my own roof, backed
up by the presence of ancestral and marital rosewood, silver and
mahogany, as a widow should, but _duty_ called me to de-weed myself
amidst the informality of an impromptu dance at the little town hotel.
And in the fifteen minutes Tom gave me I de-weeded to some purpose and
flowered out to still more. I never do anything by halves.

In that--that--trousseau old Rene had made me there was one, what she
called "simple" lingerie frock. And it looked just as simple as the
check it called for, a one and two ciphers back of it. It was of linen
as sheer as a cobweb, real lace and tiny delicious incrustations of
embroidery. It fitted in lines that melted into curves, had enticements
in the shape of a long sash and a dangerous breast-knot of shimmery
blue, the color of my eyes, and I looked new-born in it.

I'm glad that poor Mr. Carter was so stern with me about rats and things
in my hair, now that they are out of style, for I've got lots of my own
left in consequence of not wearing other peoples'. It clings and coils
to my head just any old way that looks as if I had spent an hour on it.
That made me able to be ready to go down to Tom in only ten minutes over
the time he gave me.

I stopped on next to the bottom step in the wide old hall and called Tom
to turn out the light for me, as Judy had gone.

I have turned out that light lots of times, but I felt it best to let
Tom see me in a full light when we were alone. It is well I did! At
first it stunned him,--and it is a compliment to any woman to stun Tom
Pollard. But Tom doesn't stay stunned long and I only succeeded in
suppressing him after he had landed two kisses on my shoulder, one on my
hair and one on the back of my neck.

"Molly," he said, standing off and looking at me with shining eyes, "you
are one lovely dream. Your shoulders a