done. There would have been a fight, hard feelings, Butch turned
into an enemy, and nothing profited to Lily. But Billy had done
the right thing--done it slowly and imperturbably and with the
least hurt to everybody. All of which made him more desirable to
Saxon and less possible.

She bought another pair of silk stockings that she had hesitated
at for weeks, and on Tuesday night sewed and drowsed wearily over
a new shirtwaist and earned complaint from Sarah concerning her
extravagant use of gas.

Wednesday night, at the Orindore dance, was not all undiluted
pleasure. It was shameless the way the girls made up to Billy,
and, at times, Saxon found his easy consideration for them almost
irritating. Yet she was compelled to acknowledge to herself that
he hurt none of the other fellows' feelings in the way the girls
hurt hers. They all but asked him outright to dance with them,
and little of their open pursuit of him escaped her eyes. She
resolved that she would not be guilty of throwing herself at him,
and withheld dance after dance, and yet was secretly and
thrillingly aware that she was pursuing the right tactics. She
deliberately demonstrated that she was desirable to other men, as
he involuntarily demonstrated his own desirableness to the women.

Her happiness came when he coolly overrode her objections and
insisted on two dances more than she had allotted him. And she
was pleased, as well as angered, when she chanced to overhear two
of the strapping young cannery girls. "The way that little
sawed-off is monopolizin' him," said one. And the other: "You'd
think she might have the good taste to run after somebody of her