or a young girl, and had mere excuses in the way of sleeves. To
cap the climax, however, it had a real train that persisted in getting
in her way every time she attempted to move.

For a full minute no one spoke. Grace had an almost irrepressible desire
to laugh aloud, as she caught the varied expressions on the faces of her
friends. Mr. Hammond alone appeared unmoved. Grace fancied that she even
detected a gleam of approval in his eyes as he glanced toward Marian.

"Shall we dine!" asked the judge, offering his arm to Grace, while Tom
Gray escorted Miss Putnam, the other young men following with their
friends.

The dinner passed off smoothly, although there was a curious constraint
fell upon the young people that nothing could dispel.

Marian's gown had indeed proved a surprise to her young friends, and
they could not shake off a certain sense of mortification at her lack of
good taste.

"How could Marian Barber be so ridiculous, and why did her mother ever
allow her to dress herself like that?" thought Grace as she glanced at
Marian, who was simpering at some remark that Mr. Henry Hammond was
making to her in a voice too low for the others to hear.

Then Grace suddenly remembered that Marian's mother had left Oakdale
three weeks before on a three months' visit to a sister in a distant
city.

"That deceitful old Henry Hammond is at the bottom of this," Grace
decided. "He has probably put those ideas of dressing up into Marian's
head. She needs some one to look after her. I'll ask mother if she can
stay with me until her mother returns, that is if I can persuade her to
come."

"Come out of your brown study, Grace," called Hippy. "I want you to
settle an argument that has arisen between Miss O'Malley and myself.
Never before have we had an argument. Timid, gentle creature that she
is, she has always deferred to my superior intellect, but now--"

"Yes," retorted Nora scornfully, "now, he has been routed with
slaughter, and so he has to call upon other people to rescue him from
the fruits of his own folly."

"I am not asking aid," averred Hippy with dignity. "I plead for simple
justice."

"Simple, indeed," interrupted David with a twinkle in his eye.

"I see very plainly," announced Hippy, "that I shall have to drop this
O'Malley affair and defend myself against later unkind attacks. But
first I shall eat my dessert, then I shall have greater strength to
renew the fray."

"Then my services as a settler of