matter how early he started or how much
haste he made, he always found Dryad Anderson there before him. For
weeks no other topic had passed the girl's lips, and with each
recurring visit to the small clearing hidden back in the thicket near
the brook the boy's wonder grew.

Almost from the first day she had decided upon the costume which she
would wear. Night after night she sat and made plans in a tumultuous,
bubbling flood of anticipation which he could scarcely follow, for it
was only after long argument that he had sheepishly surrendered and
agreed to "dress up" at all; she sat with a picture torn from an old
magazine across her knees--a color-plate of a dancing girl which she
meant to copy for herself--poring over it with shining eyes, her
breath coming and going softly between childishly curved lips as she
devoured every detail of its construction.

It was a thing of brilliantly contrasting colors--the picture which
she planned to copy--a sleeveless waist of dullest crimson and a much
bespangled skirt of clinging, shimmering black. And that skirt hung
clear to the ankles, swinging just high enough to disclose the gleam
of silken stockings and satiny, pointed slippers, with heels of
absurdly small girth.

The boy only half understood the feverish hunger which glowed in Dryad
Anderson's face, piquantly, wistfully earnest in the dull yellow
lantern light as she leaned forward, ticking off each item and its
probable cost upon her fingers, and waited doubtfully for him to mock
at the expense; and yet, at that, he understood far better than any
one else could ever have hoped to comprehend, for Young Denny knew too
what it was to wait--to wait for something that was drearily slow in
the coming.

One other thing marked Judge Maynard's proffered hospitality as
totally different from all the other half-similar affairs which
Boltonwood had ever known. There were to be invitations--written,
mailed invitations--instead of the usual placards tacked up in the
village post-office as they always were whenever any public
entertainment was imminent, or the haphazard invitations which were
passed along by word of mouth and which somehow they always forgot to
pass on to the boy who lived alone in the dark house on the hill.
There were to be formal, mailed invitations, and Young Denny found it
hard waiting that night for Old Jerry, who had never been so late
before.

The cool red of the horizon behind him faded to a dusky gray a