lp me down this four-foot drop as if I were a very, very
old lady, for my head is dizzy with joy that I've found somebody to care
for my schemes."

He leaped down and held up his arms. "Come, grandma!" he invited, his
face full of mischief and enthusiasm and happiness.

"I think I'll play girl, after all," she refused gaily and, accepting
one hand only, swung herself lightly down to his side.

"And it's 'bracers' the fellows think they need to put the heart back
into them!" jeered Red Pepper Burns to himself. "Let them try the open
country and a comrade like this--if there is another anywhere on earth!
But they can't have her!"

CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH HE CONTINUES TO SAW WOOD

"Here you are at last, Red, you sinner, and I'm the loser. Ches and
I've had a bet on since we saw the Green Imp tear off just as the first
guests were coming. I vowed it was a fake call and you'd never get back
till the musicians were green-flannelling their instruments."

"I knew he wouldn't do us a cut-away trick like that," declared Arthur
Chester with an affectionate, white-gloved hand on Burns's black-clad
arm. "Not that I'd have blamed you on a night like this. What people
want to give dances for in August, with the thermometer at the top of
the tree, I don't know."

"Go along in, old man, and see the ladies. Take out Pauline. Mrs.
Lessing isn't dancing. Make a sitting-out engagement with the lovely
widow, then bolt out here. That's my advice," urged Macauley.

"Much obliged, I will. Wouldn't have come if Winifred hadn't cornered
me."

"She's doing her duty by Pauline, and she considers her duty isn't done
till she's secured the men Pauline wants. But I say--when you get a look
at Ellen you'll forget the rivulets coursing down your neck. It's the
first time she's worn anything not suggestive of past experiences. It's
only white tonight, but--" Macauley's pause was eloquent.

Burns pushed on into the house, through whose open doors and windows
came sounds of revelry. A stringed orchestra was playing somewhere out
of sight, and to its music the late arrival, holding his head well up
that he might keep his collar intact until the latest possible moment,
set his course toward his hostess.

Outside, in the bower which had been made of the porch, Chester,
disgracefully shuffling off the duties of host and lounging with
Macauley and two or three other of the young married men, reported
through the flower-hung window the progress