I had the rather uncomfortable feeling on the way home that I had been
preachy; and the moment you became preachy begin to build up barriers
between yourself and your friends: but that's a defect of character I've
never been able, quite, to overcome. I keep thinking I've got the better
of it, but along will come a beautiful temptation and down I go--and
come out as remorseful as I was that afternoon on the way home from Mary
Starkweather's.

A week or two later I happened to meet Richard Starkweather on the
street in Hempfield. He was on his way home.

"Yes," he said, "we're in the old house again until spring, anyway. I
haven't been so comfortable in a year. And, say," here he looked at me
quizzically, "Mary has joined the new cemetery association; you know
they're trying to improve the resting places of the forefathers, and, by
George, if they didn't elect her chairman at the first meeting. She's a
wonder!"



CHAPTER XIII


HIS MAJESTY--BILL RICHARDS

Well, I have just been having an amusing and delightful adventure and
have come to know a Great Common Person. His name is Bill Richards, and
he is one of the hereditary monarchs of America. He belongs to our
ruling dynasty.