he step and smiled his broad, red smile at Margaret.

"Well, I've got the music for your dance, Miss Elliot. Olaf Oleson
will bring his accordion and Mollie will play the organ, when she isn't
lookin' after the grub, and a little chap from Frenchtown will bring his
fiddle--though the French don't mix with the Norwegians much."

"Delightful! Mr. Lockhart, that dance will be the feature of our trip,
and it's so nice of you to get it up for us. We'll see the Norwegians in
character at last," cried Margaret, cordially.

"See here, Lockhart, I'll settle with you for backing her in this
scheme," said Wyllis, sitting up and knocking the ashes out of his pipe.
"She's done crazy things enough on this trip, but to talk of dancing all
night with a gang of half-mad Norwegians and taking the carriage at four
to catch the six o'clock train out of Riverton--well, it's tommyrot,
that's what it is!"

"Wyllis, I leave it to your sovereign power of reason to decide whether
it isn't easier to stay up all night than to get up at three in the
morning. To get up at three, think what that means! No, sir, I prefer to
keep my vigil and then get into a sleeper."

"But what do you want with the Norwegians? I thought you were tired of
dancing."

"So I am, with some people. But I want to see a Norwegian dance, and I
intend to. Come, Wyllis, you know how seldom it is that one really wants
to do anything nowadays. I wonder when I have really wanted to go to a
party before. It will be something to remember next month at Newport,
when we have to and don't want to. Remember your own theory that
contrast is about the only thing that makes life endurable. This is my
party and Mr. Lockhart's; your whole duty tomorrow night will consist in
being nice to the Norwegian girls. I'll warrant you were adept enough
at it once. And you'd better be very nice indeed, for if there are many
such young Valkyries as Eric's sister among them, they would simply tie
you up in a knot if they suspected you were guying them."

Wyllis groaned and sank back into the hammock to consider his fate,
while his sister went on.

"And the guests, Mr. Lockhart, did they accept?"

Lockhart took out his knife and began sharpening it on the sole of his
plowshoe.

"Well, I guess we'll have a couple dozen. You see it's pretty hard to
get a crowd together here any more. Most of 'em have gone over to the
Free Gospellers, and they'd rather put their feet in the fire than shake
'em to