e Lord for that!" said Ellen, piously. "No. It's all Mrs.
Parmalee's doing, anyway! His horse is lame, and I guess she thought it
was a good chance! He'll drive over there with Gus and mama and papa
and Sadie and Mar'gret; and I guess he'll get enough of 'em, too!"

Mary Bell breathed again. He hadn't asked Carrie, anyway. And if she,
Mary Bell, really went to the dance, and the pink frock looked well,
and Jim Carr saw all the other boys crowding about her for dances--

The rosy dream brought them to the steps of the American Palace Hotel,
for Deaneville was only a village, and a brisk walker might have
circled it in twenty minutes. The hideous brown hotel, with its long
porches, was the largest building in the place, except for hay barns,
and fruit storehouses. Three or four saloons, a "social hall," the
"general store," and the smithy, formed the main street, and diverging
from it scattered the wide shady lanes that led to old homesteads and
orchards.

"Johnnie," Walt Larabee's little black-eyed manager and wife, and the
most beloved of Deaneville matrons, was in the bare, odorous hallway.
She was clad in faded blue denim overalls, and a floating transparent
kimono of some cheap stuff. Her coal-black hair was rigidly puffed and
pinned, and ornamented with two coquettish red roses, and her thin
cheeks were rouged.

"Well, say--don't you girls think you're the whole thing!" said the
lady, blithely. "Not for a minute! Walt and me are going to this dance,
too!"

She waved toward them one of the slippers she was cleaning.

"Walt said somethin' about it yes'day," continued Mrs. Larabee, with
relish, "but I said no; no twelve-mile drive for me, with a young baby!
But some folks we know came down on the morning train--you girls have
heard me speak of Ed and Lizzie Purdy?"

"Oh, yes!" said Mary Bell, sick with one more disappointment.

"Well," pursued Johnnie, "they had dinner here, and come t' talk it
over, Lizzie was wild to go, and Ed got Walt all worked up, and nothing
would do but we must get out our old carryall, and take their Thelma
and my Maxine along! Well, LAUGH--we were like a lot of kids! I'm crazy
to dance just once in Pitcher's barn. We're going up early, and have
our supper up there."

"We're going to do that, too," said Ellen, with pleasant anticipation.
"Ma and I always help set tables, and so on! It's lots of fun!"

Mary Bell's face grew sober as she listened. It WOULD be fun to be one
of the gay