not
employed her hands picked nervously at each other. Martha's shyness,
the "unappearing" quality, was another of her virtues in the eyes of
Tom's mother. Martha rarely left home even to go to Millford. Martha
did not go to the Agricultural Fair when her mats and quilts and butter
and darning and buttonholes on cotton got their red tickets. Martha
stayed at home and dug potatoes--a nice, quiet, unappearing girl.

When they played games at the Slaters that evening, Martha would not
play. She never cared for games she said, they tired a person so. She
would just watch the others, and she wished again that she had her
knitting.

Then the kitchen floor was cleared; table, chairs and lounge were set
outside to make room for the dancing, and when the violins rang out
with the "Arkansaw Traveller," and big John Kennedy in his official
voice of caller-off announced, "Select your partners," every person
felt that the real business of the evening had begun.

Tom had learned to dance, though his parents would have been surprised
had they known it. Out in the granary on rainy days hired men had
obligingly instructed him in the mysteries of the two-step and waltz.
He sat in a corner and watched the first dance. When Jim Russell came
into the hall, after receiving a warm welcome from Mr. and Mrs. Slater,
who stood at the door, he was conscious of a sudden thrill of pleasure.
It was the vision of Camilla, at the farther end of the dining-room, as
she helped the Slater girls to receive their guests. Camilla wore a red
dress that brought out the blue-black of her eyes, and it seemed to Jim
as he watched her graceful movements that he had never seen anyone so
beautiful. She was piloting a bevy of bashful girls to the stairway,
and as she passed him she gave him a little nod and smile that set his
heart dancing.

He heard the caller-off calling for partners for a quadrille. The
fiddlers had already tuned their instruments. From where he stood he
could see the figures forming, but Jim watched the stairway. At last
she came, with a company of other girls, none of whom he saw, and he
asked her for the first dance. Jim was not a conceited young man, but
he felt that she would not refuse him. Nor did she.

Camilla danced well and so did Jim, and many an eye followed them as
they wound in and out through the other dancers. When the dance was
over he led her to a seat and sat beside her. They had much to talk of.
Camilla was anxious to h