"No, thank the Lord for that!" said Ellen, piously. "No. It's all
Mrs. Parmalee's doing, anyway! His horse is lame, and I guess she
thought it was a good chance! He'll drive over there with Gus and
mama and papa and Sadie and Mar'gret; and I guess he'll get enough
of 'em, too!"

Mary Bell breathed again. He hadn't asked Carrie, anyway. And if
she, Mary Bell, really went to the dance, and the pink frock looked
well, and Jim Carr saw all the other boys crowding about her for
dances--

The rosy dream brought them to the steps of the American Palace
Hotel, for Deaneville was only a village, and a brisk walker might
have circled it in twenty minutes. The hideous brown hotel, with its
long porches, was the largest building in the place, except for hay
barns, and fruit storehouses. Three or four saloons, a "social
hall," the "general store," and the smithy, formed the main street,
and diverging from it scattered the wide shady lanes that led to old
homesteads and orchards.

"Johnnie," Walt Larabee's little black-eyed manager and wife, and
the most beloved of Deaneville matrons, was in the bare, odorous
hallway. She was clad in faded blue denim overalls, and a floating
transparent kimono of some cheap stuff. Her coal-black hair was
rigidly puffed and pinned, and ornamented with two coquettish red
roses, and her thin cheeks were rouged.

"Well, say--don't you girls think you're the whole thing!" said the
lady, blithely. "Not for a minute! Walt and me are going to this