he "indisposed" word she
disliked, and as you live! she invited the Princess to go home with us
to dinner. She stood tall and straight, her eyes very bright, and her
cheeks a little redder than usual, as she shook hands and said a few
pleasant words that were like from a book, they fitted and were so
right. When mother asked her to dinner she said: "Thank you kindly.
I should be glad to go, but my people expect me at home and they would
be uneasy. Perhaps you would allow me to ride over some week day and
become acquainted?"

Mother said she would be happy to have her, and Shelley said so too,
but Sally was none too cordial. She had dark curls and pink cheeks
herself, and every one had said she was the prettiest girl in the
county before Shelley began to blossom out and show what she was going
to be. Sally never minded that, but when the Princess came she was a
little taller, and her hair was a trifle longer, and heavier, and
blacker, and her eyes were a little larger and darker, and where Sally
had pink skin and red lips, the Princess was dark as olive, and her
lips and cheeks were like red velvet. Anyway, the Princess had said
she would come over; mother and Shelley had been decent to her, and
Sally hadn't been exactly insulting. It would be a little more than
you could expect for her to be wild about the Princess. I believe she
was pleased over having been invited to dinner, and as she was a
stranger she couldn't know that mother had what we called the
"invitation habit."

I have seen her ask from fifteen to twenty in one trip down the aisle
on Sunday morning. She wanted them to come too; the more who came, the
better she liked it. If the hitching rack and barnyard were full on
Sunday she just beamed. If the sermon pleased her, she invited more.
That morning she was feeling so good she asked seventeen; and as she
only had dressed six chickens--third table, backs and ham, for me as
usual; but when the prospects were as now, I always managed to coax a
few gizzards from Candace; she didn't dare give me livers--they were
counted. Almost everyone in the church was the happiest that morning
they had been in years. When the preacher came, he breathed it from
the air, and it worked on him so he preached the best sermon he ever
had, and never knew that Leon made him do it.

Maybe after all it's a good thing to tell people about their meanness
and give them a stirring up once in a while.

CHAPTER III