ll care to
dress for dinner?"

With saccharin devotion Milt yearned back, "No, Mrs. Gilson. No. Mr.
McGolwey won't care to dress. He's eccentric."

"But you'll make him come?"

Milt was tactfully beginning to refuse when Gene Gilson at last
exploded, turned purple, covered his dripping, too-red lips with his
handkerchief.

Then, abruptly, Milt hurled at Mrs. Gilson, "All right. We'll come.
Bill'll be awfully funny. He's never been out of a jerkwater burg in his
life, hardly. He's an amusing cuss. He thinks I'm smart! He loves me
like a dog. Oh, he's rich! Ha, ha, ha!"

Milt might have gone on ... if he had, Mr. and Mrs. Gilson would have
gone away, much displeased. But Bill arrived, with some of the worst tea
in the world, and four cups tastefully done in cupids' heads and much
gilt.

Milt made tea, ignoring them, while Bill entertained the Gilsons and
Saxtons with Rabelaisian stories of threshing-time when shirts prickly
with chaff and gritty with dust stuck to sweat-dripping backs; of the
"funny thing" of Milt and Bill being hired to move a garbage-pile and
"swiping" their employer's "mushmelons"; of knotting shirts at the
swimming-hole so that the bawling youngsters had to "chaw beef"; of
drinking beer in the livery-stable at Melrose; of dropping the
water-pitcher from a St. Klopstock hotel window upon the head of the
"constabule" and escaping from him across the lean-to roof.

Mrs. Gilson encouraged him; Bill sat with almost closed eyes, glorying
in the saga of small-town life; Saxton and Gilson did not conceal their
contemptuous grins.

But Claire---- After nervously rubbing the tips of her thumbs with
flickering agitated fingers, she had paid no attention to Bill and the
revelation of Milt's rustic life; she had quietly gone to Milt, to help
him prepare the scanty tea.

She whispered, "Never mind, dear. I don't care. It was all twice as much
fun as being wheeled in lacy prams by cranky nurses, as Jeff and I were.
But I know how you feel. Are you ashamed of having been a prairie
pirate?"

"No, I'm not! We were wild kids--we raised a lot of Cain--but I'm glad
we did."

"So am I. I couldn't stand it if you were ashamed. Listen to me, and
remember little Claire's words of wisdom. These fools are trying--oh,
they're so obvious!--they're trying to make me feel that the prim Miss
Boltwood of Brooklyn Heights is a stranger to you. Well, they're
succeeding in making me a stranger--to them!"

"Claire! Dear