girls were as lovely as a bunch of spring blossoms, and Julia looked
like the most gorgeous, pink, fragrant, drooping cabbage-rose as Peter
danced with her again and again. I was so glad, because he is as tall as
she is, and she is such a good dancer that it must have been as soothing
to his tired nerves as a nice wide rocking-chair with billows of blue
mull cushions. It was easy to see what she thought of him from the way
she looked at him, and poor Pink took me out in the moonlight and swore
at me in polite language.

"Why don't you feed your sick poet your own self, Betty, and not let him
loose to eat up my girl?" he stormed.

"Oh, Pink, how can you be so ungenerous, when you know how wonderful he
is and how wonderful his play will be if you and everybody are kind and
good to him while he is writing it," I chided him.

"Well, he had better not put Julia into it without me," he answered,
somewhat mollified at my reproof.

"He won't, I know he won't," I hastened to assure him. "Especially if
you are nice to him, as you promised. You know, Pink, you are an awfully
interesting man in some ways, and I know it is going to do Peter a lot
of good to be friends with you; you are so--so substantial."

"That's it; slap my fat! Everybody does," he answered, gloomily.

"It was the mules I was talking about, not you, Pink," I answered,
hurriedly, for I know how sensitive he is.

"Well, call me a mule then," he again said, with the deepest depression.