t, after all, he demanded of himself, what did a girl want to know
such things for? He would have liked better to see her in the shade with
an embroidery hoop.

* * * * *

Restraining their trembling haste, yet fearing that they might miss
something, the initiated townfolks managed to stay away from the Prouty
House until the fashionably late hour of eight, but the simpler rural
guests having eaten at six were ready and holding down the chairs in the
office before "the music" had arrived. There was a flutter of puzzled
inquiry among the Early Birds when Mrs. Abram Pantin, Mrs. Sudds and
Mrs. Myron Neifkins with an air of conscious importance stationed
themselves in a row at the door opening into the dining room, which was
now being noisily cleared of tables and chairs.

Mrs. Pantin, as gossip had surmised, wore electric blue with collar and
cuffs of lace that presumably was real, while angular Mrs. Sudds looked
chaste, if somewhat like a windmill in repose, in her bridal gown. Mrs.
Neifkins, too, came up to expectations in her peach-blow satin.

For a while the ladies of the receiving line found their position
somewhat of a sinecure, for nobody knew what they were standing there
for until Mrs. Rufus Webb, the wife of Prouty's new haberdasher,
arrived. Mrs. Webb had been called home to her dying mother's bedside,
but fortunately had been able to return from her sad errand in time for
the function at the Prouty House. When she laid aside her wrap it was
observed that she had gone into red.

Kate was an unconscionable time in dressing, Hugh thought, as he waited
in the office, considering that the flour sack tied behind her saddle
had seemed to contain her wardrobe easily enough.

His attention was focused upon Mrs. Neifkins, whom he had last seen in a
wrapper and slat sunbonnet, when a lull in the hubbub that became a hush
caused him to look up. His eyes followed the gaze of every other pair of
eyes to the head of the stairs that came down from the floor above into
the office. He saw Kate--dreadful as to clothes as a caricature or a
comic valentine! She had a wreath of red paper roses in her hair and a
chain of them reached from one shoulder nearly to the hem of her skirt
on the other side. The dress itself was made without regard to the
prevailing mode and of the three-cent-a-yard bunting bought by sheepmen
by the bolt to be used for flags to scare off coyotes in lambing time