. "Don't you ever think I don't appreciate what you do for me--what
you are to me!"

"I guess that's all right, Phil," he said, and turned round to the
chiffonier and blew his nose furiously. "Where's Tom?"

"I guess daddy's gone downstairs."

"Well, most of your aunts are on the job somewhere and we'd better go
down and start this party. I hear the fiddlers tuning up."

Amzi II had built a big house with a generous hall and large rooms, and
it had been a matter of pride with Amzi III to maintain it as it had
been, refusing to listen to the advice of his sisters that he shut off
part of it. Amzi liked space, and he was not in the least dismayed by
problems of housekeeping. In preparing for Phil's party he had had all
the white woodwork repainted, and the floors of the drawing- and
living-rooms had been polished for dancing.

In Montgomery functions of all sorts begin early. The number of
available public vehicles is limited, and by general consent the
citizens take turns in the use of them. There hadn't been a party at the
Montgomery homestead since the marriage of the last of the Montgomery
girls. It was not surprising that to-night many people thought a little
mournfully of the marriage of the first! The launching of Phil afforded
opportunity for contrasting her with her mother; she was or she was not
like Lois; nearly all the old people had an opinion one way or another.

Among the early arrivals was Mrs. John Newman King. Mrs. King, at
eighty, held her own as the person of chief social importance in town.
The Montgomerys were a good second; but their standing was based merely
upon long residence and wealth; whereas Mrs. King had to her credit not
only these essential elements of provincial distinction, but she had
been the wife of a United States Senator in the great days of the Civil
War. She had known Lincoln and all the host of wartime heroes. Lincoln,
Grant, and Sherman had been her guests right there in Montgomery--at the
big place with the elms and beeches, all looking very much to-day as it
did in the stirring sixties. Mrs. King wore a lace cap and very rustling
silk, and made pretty little curtsies. She talked politics to gentlemen,
and asked women about their babies, and was wholly charming with young
girls.

She paused before Phil, in the semicircle that included Amzi and his
sisters with their husbands, and Tom Kirkwood.

"My dear child, on this proud occasion I want to say that the day you
fell