ey sagged along the street at their usual
tortoise gait.

"What is it, Ramsey?"

"Seems kind o' funny they never have anything to say any one can
take any interest in. Always the same ole whoopety-whoop about George
Washington and Pilgrim Fathers and so on. I bet five dollars before
long we'd of heard him goin' on about our martyred Presidents, William
McKinley and James A. Garfield and Benjamin Harrison and all so on, and
then some more about the ole Red, White, and Blue. Don't you wish they'd
_quit_, sometimes, about the 'Ole Flag'?"

"I dunno," said Milla. "I wasn't listening any at all. I hate speeches."

"Well, I could _stand_ 'em," Ramsey said, more generously, "if they'd
ever give anybody a little to think about. What's the use always
draggin' in George Warshington and the Ole Flag? And who wants to
hear any more ole truck about 'from ole rocky New England to golden
California,' and how big and fine the United States is and how it's the
land of the Free and all that? Why don't they ever say anything new?
That's what I'd like to know."

Milla laughed, and when he asked why, she told him she'd never heard
him talk so much "at one stretch." "I guess that speech got you kind of
wound up," she said. "Let's talk about something different."

"I just soon," he agreed. And so they walked on in silence, which
seemed to suit Milla. She hung weightily upon his arm, and they dawdled,
drifting from one side of the pavement to the other as they slowly
advanced. Ablert and Sadie, ahead of them, called "good-night" from a
corner, before turning down the side street where Sadie lived; and then,
presently, Ramsey and Milla were at the latter's gate. He went in with
her, halting at the front steps.

"Well, g'night, Milla," he said. "Want to go out walking to-morrow
night? Albert and Sadie are."

"I can't to-morrow night," she told him with obvious regret. "Isn't it
the worst luck! I got an aunt comin' to visit from Chicago, and she's
crazy about playing 'Five Hundred,' and Mama and Papa said I haf to stay
in to make four to play it. She's liable to be here three or four days,
and I guess I got to be around home pretty much all the time she's here.
It's the worst luck!"

He was doleful, but ventured to be literary. "Well, what can't be helped
must be endured. I'll come around when she's gone."

He moved as if to depart, but she still retained his arm and did not
prepare to relinquish it.

"Well--" he said.

"Well what