very man opened wide
his ears.

"Miss Mellville Creecy."

"Whom did he say?" queried Miss Josey, tremendously excited and not
quite certain she had heard aright. Miss Josey was nibbling at a
peach; she nibbled no more. Though blessed with an excellent appetite,
Miss Josey in her hungriest moment was more eager to hear something
new than eat something nice.

"Did you say Mell, Rube?"

"I did," said Rube.

It struck the crowd speechless. What? Rube Rutland, the son of an
ex-Governor, an ex-Judge, an ex-Senator, dead now, but dead with all
his titles on him; Rube Rutland, the greatest catch in the State,
going to crown Mellville Creecy, daughter of that old ignoramus who
made "fritters" of the King's English, and dug potatoes, and hoed
corn, and ploughed in the fields with his own hands? The thing was
preposterous! It was a thing, too, to be resented by his friends and
equals.

Miss Rutland drew her brother aside.

"Rube, you cannot mean it! You surely have some sense! A little, if
not much! You can't crown that obscure girl with the cream of the
county, your own personal friends, all around you."

"Can't I?" said Rube. "I can and _will!_ The cream of the county may
go to--anywhere." Rube closed up blandly: "I will not limit them in
their choice of locations. That would be not only ungenerous but
ungentlemanly."

"Rube," persisted Miss Rutland, "do listen to reason. What will mother
say? What will everybody say?"

"Say what they darned please!"

Rube was first of all a freeborn American--secondly, an aristocrat.

"What's the use of being somebody if you've got to knuckle down to
what people say?"

"But you are not obliged to crown anybody," insinuated Clara. "Rather
than crown this low-born girl, make some one your proxy. Jerome
would--"

"Oh, I have no doubt, with pleasure! You are a deep one, Clara, but
you'll wear no crown this day. Might as well give it up."

So she perceived, and turned off in a rage, first informing him that
he always had been, and always would be an unconscionable ass.

"You have fully decided, then?" questioned the master of ceremonies.
"I have," Rube told him, beginning to get put out. Pretty Mell might
well have been a scare-crow, such consternation had she created
amongst them all. "I decided some time ago. Will it be necessary for
me to mount a tree-top and blow a clarion blast before I can make you
all understand that I am going to crown Mellville Creecy, and nobody
els