-why must she blush? Had he noticed her lack of savoir-faire? More
diffidently she peeped at him again to see whether he had. It seemed
to her that his expression had altered. It was a subtle change; but,
somehow, it made her blush again. And turn her eyes away again--more
quickly than before. But there was a singing in her brain. The dark,
interesting-looking Stranger LIKED her to look at him--LIKED her to
blush and look away!

She felt oddly light-headed--like someone unknown to herself. She wanted
to laugh and chatter about she knew not what. She wanted to--

But here certain external happenings cruelly grabbed her attention. Old
Ben, who had seemed to slow down obligingly upon the girls' greeting
of Raymond, had refused to heed Tess's tugging effort to bring him to
a standstill. To be sure, he moved more slowly, but move he did, and
determinedly; till--merciful heaven!--he came to a dead and purposeful
halt in front of the saloon. Not "a saloon," but "the saloon!"

Now, more frantically than she had urged him to pause, Tess implored
Ben to proceed. No local standards are so hide-bound as those of a small
town, and in Cherryvale it was not deemed decently permissible, but
disgraceful, to have aught to do with liquor. "The saloon" was far from
a "respectable" place even for men to visit; and for two girls to drive
up openly--brazenly--

"Get up, Ben! Get up!" rang an anguished duet.

Missy reached over and helped wallop the rains. Oh, this pain!--this
faintness! She now comprehended the feeling which had so often overcome
the fair ladies of England when enmeshed in some frightful situation.
They, on such upsetting occasions, had usually sunk back and murmured:

"Please ring the bell--a glass of wine!" And Missy, while reading, had
been able to vision herself, in some like quandary, also ordering a
"glass of wine"; but, now!... the wine was only too terribly at hand!

"Get up!--there's a good old Ben!"

"Good old Ben--get up!"

But he was not a good old Ben. He was a mean old Ben--mean with inborn,
incredibly vicious stubbornness. How terrible to live to come to this!
But Missy was about to learn what a tangled web Fate weaves, and how
amazingly she deceives sometimes when life looks darkest. Raymond and
the Stranger (Missy knew his name was Ed Brown; alas! but you can't
have everything in this world) started forth to rescue at the same time,
knocked into each other, got to Ben's head simultaneously, and toget