has to be civil to a lot of girls he doesn't
particularly admire. Lucy's not so bad. She's rather pretty--when she's
feeling amiable--and she certainly dresses well."

Jeff's assertion in the matter of Lucy's appearance was proved true.
When Just, on Friday evening, marched across to the other house,
inwardly raging at his fate, he had an agreeable surprise. As he stood
by the fireplace with Charlotte, Lucy came down-stairs and floated in at
the door. Just stopped in the middle of a sentence and stared.

Being really a very pretty girl, and feeling, at the present moment, the
height of fluttering expectation, her face was illumined into an
attractiveness that was quite a revelation to her friends. For the first
time Lucy felt herself to be in the centre of things, and it made
another girl of her. In addition, the evening frock she wore was so
charming in style and colouring that it contributed not a little to the
general effect.

Altogether, Just experienced quite a revulsion of feeling in regard to
the painful duty before him, and came forward to assist Lucy into her
long coat with considerable alacrity and cheerfulness.

"Oh, I do love parties so," she declared, as they hurried along the
streets. "I'm not used to being so dull as I've been here. It seems to
me that you have mighty few doings for young people. I don't call
candy-pulls and fudge parties real _parties_."

"Probably you won't call this to-night a real party, then. There's never
much that's exciting at Doctor Agnew's. He always has an orchestra
playing, and we walk round and talk, and usually somebody does something
to entertain us--a reading or songs. Maybe you won't think it's as
festive as you expect."

"Oh, well, I reckon it will be a nice change," said she, with quite
unexpected good humour.

In the dressing-room Chester Agnew, the son of the head-master, came up
to Just with an expression of mingled pleasure and chagrin.

"Awfully glad to see you, Birch," he said, "I suppose you noticed that
we have no music going to-night. It's a shame, isn't it? Lindmann's men
have been delayed by a freight wreck on the P. & Q. They were coming
home from a wedding down the line somewhere, and telephoned us they
couldn't get out here before midnight. We've tried to get some other
music, but everything's engaged somewhere."

"Too bad, but it's no great matter," Just replied, comfortably. "We can
worry along without the orchestra."

"No, you can't. Mother