out a dance with me.

The first thing she asked me was about Frosty. Who was he? and why was he
here? and how long had he been here? I told her all I knew about him, and
then turned frank and asked her why she wanted to know.

"Mama hasn't recognized him--yet," she said confidentially, "but I was
sure he was the same. He has shaved his mustache, and he's much browner
and heavier, but he's Fred Miller--and why doesn't he come and speak to
me?"

Out of much words, I gathered that she and Frosty were, to put it mildly,
old friends. She didn't just say there was an engagement between them, but
she hinted it; his father had "had trouble"--the vagueness of women!--and
Edith's mama had turned Frosty down, to put it bluntly. Frosty had,
ostensibly, gone to South Africa, and that was the last of him. Miss Edith
seemed quite disturbed over seeing him there in Kenmore. I told her that
if Frosty wanted to stay in the background, that was his privilege and my
gain, and she smiled at me vaguely and said of course it didn't really
matter.

At supper-time our crowd got the storekeeper intimidated sufficiently to
open his store and sell us something to eat. The King faction had looked
upon us blackly, though there were too many of us to make it safe
meddling, and none of us were minded to break bread with them. Instead, we
sat around on the counter and on boxes in the store, and ate crackers and
sardines and things like that. I couldn't help remembering my last Fourth,
and the banquet I had given on board the _Molly Stark_--my yacht, named
after the lady known to history, whom dad claims for an ancestress--and
I laughed out loud. The boys wanted to know the cause of my mirth, and so,