But Allie's confidence forsook her at this. "I'd--be scared stiff.
Folks would laugh. They haven't got--haven't anything to do but laugh
at other folks, and I don't like to be laughed at."

"Laugh at you! Fancy that! You're too modest." Delamater adopted the
cooing note of a dove. "'Pon my word, you're too modest. If you could
hear the things I hear--" He paused, not knowing exactly what to say he
had heard, but his vagueness, the very eloquence of his hesitation,
caused Allie's face to light up. This was the second compliment paid
her since her arrival at the Notch, therefore when the phonograph
resumed its melodious measures she yielded herself with abandon to the
arms of her partner, and her red lips were parted, her somber eyes were
shining. That day she began a course of exhibition dancing.

It was on that afternoon that Delamater had told the clerk of
discovering Ma Briskow alone in the woods. There was an open golf
tournament at the Notch, prominent amateurs and professionals were
competing, and the hotel was crowded to its capacity with players,
fashionable followers of the game and a small army of society reporters
and sport writers. This being the height of the season, social doings
at the resort were featured in all the large Eastern papers, for famous
names were on the register and the hotel switch was jammed with private
cars.

Allie Briskow was in one of her trying moods to-day, for the
out-of-doors called to her. Sounds of laughter and gayety, strains of
music, had distracted her from her studies, her monotonous routine had
become hopelessly unbearable all at once. From her window she could see
young people, hear young voices, and envy flamed in her soul. Those
girls were her age; those men, easy, immaculate, different from
anything she had ever seen--except Calvin Gray--they, too, were young
and they courted those girls. Contemplation of the chattering throngs
showed Allie more clearly than ever the chasm separating her from these
people, and reawakened in her that black resentment which at times made
her so difficult to manage. She was thankful that her mother had
disappeared and that her father was at the livery stable; she hoped
they would stay away all day. At least, they were safe from ridicule.
She wondered if she might not induce them to dine in their rooms that
evening, and thus spare herself the embarrassment she always suffered
when she accompanied them into the public dining room.

It s