ore a puzzled look.

"Crowheart society."

A light broke over his face; then he laughed aloud, such a shout of
unadulterated glee that Alphonse and Gaston ceased to squeal and fixed
their twinkling eyes upon him in momentary wonder.

"When I told you I was going I thought of course they would ask me. I
thought the tardy invitation was just an oversight, but now I know"--her
chin quivered suddenly like a hurt child's--"that they never meant to
ask me."

Van Lennop's face had quickly sobered.

"You are sure he really said that--this Andy P. Symes?"

"I think there's no mistake. It was the easiest way to rid themselves of
my friendship." She told him then of the reproof Symes had administered.

An unwonted shine came into Van Lennop's calm eyes as he listened. This
put a different face upon the affair, this intentional injury to the
feelings of his stanch little champion, it somehow made it a more
personal matter. The "social line" amused him merely, though, in a way,
it held a sociological interest for him, too. It was, he told himself,
like being privileged to witness the awakening of social ambitions in a
tribe of bushmen.

Van Lennop was silent, but the girl felt his unspoken sympathy, and it
was balm to her sore little heart.

"This--society?" she asked after a time. "What is it? We've never had it
before. Everybody knows everybody else out here and there are so few of
us that we've always had our good times together and we have never left
anybody out. The very last thing we wanted to do was to hurt anyone
else's feelings in that way."

"You have left those halycon days behind, I'm afraid," Van Lennop
replied. "The first instinct of a certain class of people is to hurt the
feelings of others. It's the only way they know to proclaim their
superiority, a superiority of which they are not at all sure,
themselves. Just what 'society' is, is an old and threadbare subject and
has been threshed out over and over again without greatly altering
anybody's individual point of view. Good breeding, brains and money are
generally conceded to be the essentials required by that complex
institution and certainly one or all of them are necessary for any great
social success."

Van Lennop watched her troubled face and waited.

"Then that's why old Edouard Dubois was asked, though he never speaks,
and Alva Jackson, who is uncouth and ignorant? They represent money."

Van Lennop smiled.

"Undoubtedly."

"And the Starrs