coming into my eyes when Tom suddenly came over the fence and picked me
and the heart up together and put us into an adventure of the first
water.

"Molly," he said in the most nonchalant manner imaginable, "we've got a
jolly, strolling, German band up at the hotel; and we're going to have
an evening's gaiety. Get into a pretty dress, and don't keep me
waiting."

"Tom!" I gasped.

"Oh, don't spoil sport, Moll! You said you would wake up this town, and
now do it. It seems twenty instead of six years since I went to a party
with you, and I'm not going to wait any longer. Everybody is there, and
they can't all have Miss Clinton."

That settled it--I couldn't let a visiting girl be worn out with
attention. Of course, I had planned to make a dignified debut under my
own roof, backed up by the presence of ancestral and marital rosewood,
silver and mahogany, as a widow should; but _duty_ called me to
de-weed myself amidst the informality of an impromptu _soirée_ at the
little town hotel. And in the fifteen minutes Tom gave me I de-weeded
to some purpose and flowered out to still more. I never do anything
by halves.

In that--that--trousseau Madame Rene had made me there was one, what
she called "simple" lingerie frock. And it looked just as simple as the
cheque it called for. It was of lawn as transparent as a cobweb, real
lace and tiny delicious incrustations of embroidery. It fitted in lines
that melted into curves, had enticements in the shape of a long sash and