eet your
guests?" asked Tom Harbison. "I saw her again this morning."

"That little country person!" exclaimed Jean Roland. "No style at all
to her."

"Not a particle!" echoed Nan.

"Oh, that little cousin of ours?" said Jeff, pausing in his game.

"Jeff, how can you?" cried Mildred. "She's a very common person who
happens to be named Buck and now they are trumping up some foolish old
tale that they were Bucknors 'way back yonder in the middle ages and
that they are related to us. It is too ridiculous for words."

"Our kin all the same," teased Jeff, going on with his game.

"Right fetching skirt!" said Tom. "She was flirting with some men on
the hotel porch when we drove by this morning. I reckon they were all
cousins, too."

Jeff looked up from his game with a gleam of anger in his eye. He lost
track of the cards, got confused, played from the wrong hand, blocked
himself from a re-entry and promptly got set. All because Tom Harbison
intimated that Judith Buck was not conducting herself with propriety.

"Here comes somebody! I saw a car turn in from the pike," announced
Nan. "I hope it isn't any more company."

The attention of everyone was focused on the approaching vehicle. It
was Judith's little blue car, skimming down the avenue with the usual
speed exacted of it by its stern young mistress, who seemed bent on
getting at least thirty-six hours out of the twenty-four. No one could
have said she did not have style in her manner of turning a curve and
neatly landing at the yard gate.

"Speak of the devil," muttered Mildred, "if it isn't that Judith Buck.
What on earth can she want?"

Judith, with her usual expedition, was out of the car and with sample
case in hand was through the gate and half way up the walk before any
one attempted to answer Mildred's query.

"Come to see your brother, perhaps," suggested Jean Roland.

"Ah, be a sister to me," sighed the fat boy, "please be a sister to
me, Mildred."

Judith faltered not a moment, but marched straight up the steps. The
young men all jumped from their seats and Jeff came forward with
outstretched hand, but the girl pretended not to see the gesture. With
a businesslike "Good-morning," she proceeded to open up her sample
case and begin her salesman's patter: "I have here--" She was
determined that the call should be purely a commercial one and that
the Bucknors could none of them think for a moment that she sought or
even desired any social dealings w