milk-toast and tea, and the cookies and jelly Mary Bell was famous
for. The girl chatted cheerfully.

"You don't feel very badly about the dance, do you, deary?" said
Mrs. Barber, as the gentle young hands settled her comfortably for
the night.

"Not a speck!" answered Mary Bell, bravely, as she kissed her.

"Bernie and Johnnie going--married women!" said the old lady,
sleepily. "I never heard such nonsense! Don't you go out of call,
will you, dear?"

Mary Bell was eating her own supper, ten minutes later, when the
train whistled, and she ran, breathless, to the road, to meet Lew
Dinwoodie.

"What did Aunt Matty say, Lew?" called Mary Bell, peering behind him
into the closed surrey, for a glimpse of the old lady.

The man stared at her with a falling jaw.

"Well, I guess I owe you one for this, Mary Bell!" he stammered.
"I'll eat my shirt if I thought of your note again!"

It was too much. Mary Bell began to dislodge little particles of
dried mud carefully from the wheel, her eyes swimming, her breast
rising.

"Right in her part of town, too!" pursued the contrite messenger;