She was idling at the front-parlour window when she saw Picker's delivery wagon stop at the gate. She hurried back to the kitchen, telling herself that Marguerite shouldn't be disturbed at her washtubs. So she herself let Arthur in. All sprinkled with snow and ruddy-cheeked and mischievous-eyed, he grinned at her as he emptied his basket on the kitchen table.

"Well," he bantered, "did you pray for my sins last night?"

"You shouldn't make fun of things like that," she said rebukingly.

Arthur chortled.

"Gee, Missy, but you're sure a scream when you get pious!" Then he sobered and, casually—a little too casually, enquired: "Say, I s'pose you're going again to-night?"

Missy regretfully shook her head. "No, I've got a. sore throat." She didn't deem it necessary to say anything about parental objections. Arthur looked regretful, too.

"Say, that's too bad. I was thinking, maybe—"

He shuffled from one foot to the other in a way that to Missy clearly finished his speech's hiatus: He'd been contemplating taking HER home to-night instead of that frivolous Genevieve Hicks! What a shame! To lose the chance to be a really good influence—for surely getting Arthur to church again, even though for the main purpose of seeing her home, was better than for him not to go to church at all. It is excusable to sort of inveigle a sinner into righteous paths. What a shame she couldn't grasp at this chance for service! But she oughtn't to let go of it altogether; oughtn't to just abandon him, as it were, to his fate. She puckered her brows meditatively.

"I'm not going to church, but—"

She paused, thinking hard. Arthur waited.

An inspiration came to her. "Anyway, I have to go to the library to-night. I've got some history references to look up."

Arthur brightened. The library appealed to him as a rendezvous more than church, anyway. Oh, ye Public Libraries of all the Cherryvales of the land! Winter-time haunt of young love, rivalling band-concerts in the Public Square on summer evenings! What unscholastic reminiscences might we not hear, could book-lined shelves in the shadowy nooks, but speak!

"About what time will you be through at the Library?" asked Arthur, still casual.

"Oh, about eight-thirty," said Missy, not pausing to reflect that it's an inconsistent sore throat that can venture to the Library but not to church.

"Well, maybe I'll be dropping along that way about that time," opined Arthur. "Maybe I'll see you there."

"That would be nice," said Missy, tingling.

She continued to tingle after he had jauntily departed with his basket and clattered away in his delivery wagon. She had a "date" with Arthur. The first real "date" she'd ever had! Then, resolutely she squashed her thrills; she must remember that this meeting was for a Christian cause. The motive was what made it all right for her to disobey—that is, to SEEM to disobey—her parents' commands. They didn't "understand." She couldn't help feeling a little perturbed over her apparent disobedience and had to argue, hard with her conscience.

Then, another difficulty presented itself to her mind. Mother had set her foot down on evening visits to the Library—mother seemed to think girls went there evenings chiefly to meet boys! Mother would never let her go—especially in such weather and with a sore throat. Missy pondered long and earnestly.

The result was that, after supper, at which mother had appeared, pale and heavy-eyed, Missy said tentatively:

"Can I run up to Kitty's a little while to See what the lessons are for to-morrow?"

"I don't think you'd better, dear," mother replied listlessly. "It wouldn't be wise, with that throat."

"But my throat's better. And I've GOT to keep up my lessons, mother! And just a half a block can't hurt me if I bundle up." Missy had formulated her plan well; Kitty Allen had been chosen as an alibi because of her proximity.

"Very well, then," agreed mother.

As Missy sped toward the library, conflicting emotions swirled within her and joined forces with the sharp breathlessness brought on by her haste. She had never before been out alone at night, and the blackness of tree-shadows lying across the intense whiteness of the snow struck her in two places at once—imaginatively in the brain and fearsomely in the stomach. Nor is a guilty conscience a reassuring companion under such circumstances. Missy kept telling herself that, if she HAD lied a little bit, it was really her parents' fault; if they had only let her go to church, she wouldn't have been driven to sneaking out this way. But her trip, however fundamentally virtuous—and with whatever subtly interwoven elements of pleasure at its end—was certainly not an agreeable one. At the moment Missy resolved never, never to sneak off alone at night again.

In the brightly lighted library her fears faded away; she warmed to anticipation again. And she found some very enjoyable stories in the new magazines—she seemed, strangely, to have forgotten about any "history references." But, as the hands on the big clock above the librarian's desk moved toward half-past eight, apprehensions began to rise again. What if Arthur should fail to come? Could she ever live through that long, terrible trip home, all alone?

Then, just as fear was beginning to turn to panic, Arthur sauntered in, nonchalantly took a chair at another table, picked up a magazine and professed to glance through it. And then, while Missy palpitated, he looked over at her, smiled, and made an interrogative movement with his eyebrows. More palpitant by the second, she replaced her magazines and got into her wraps. As she moved toward the door, whither Arthur was also sauntering, she felt that every eye in the Library must be observing. Hard to tell whether she was more proud or embarrassed at the public empressement of her "date."

Arthur, quite at ease, took her arm to help her down the slippery steps.

Arthur wore his air of assurance gracefully because he was so used to it. Admiration from the fair sex was no new thing to him. And Missy knew this. Perhaps that was one reason she'd been so modestly pleased that he had wished to bestow his gallantries upon her. She realized that Raymond Bonner was much handsomer and richer; and that Kitty Allen's cousin Jim from Macon City, in his uniform of a military cadet, was much more distinguished-looking; and that Don Jones was much more humbly adoring. Arthur had red hair, and lived in a boarding-house and drove a delivery-wagon, and wasn't the least bit humble; but he had an audacious grin and upcurling lashes and "a way with him." So Missy accepted his favour with a certain proud gratitude.

She felt herself the heroine of a thrilling situation though their conversation, as Arthur guided her along the icy sidewalks, was of very ordinary things: the weather—Missy's sore throat (sweet solicitude from Arthur)—and gossip of the "crowd"—the weather's probabilities to-morrow—more gossip—the weather again.

The weather was, in fact, in assertive evidence. The wind whipped chillingly about Missy's shortskirted legs, for they were strolling slowly—the correct way to walk when one has a "date." Missy's teeth were chattering and her legs seemed wooden, but she'd have died rather than suggest running a block to warm up. Anyway, despite physical discomforts, there was a certain deliciousness in the situation, even though she found it difficult to turn the talk into the spiritual trend she had proposed. Finally Arthur himself mentioned the paper-wad episode, laughing at it as though it were a sort of joke.

That was her opening.

"You shouldn't be so worldly, Arthur," she said in a voice of gentle reproof.

"Worldly?" in some surprise.

She nodded seriously over her serviceable, unworldly brown collarette.

"How am I worldly?" he pursued, in a tone of one not entirely unpleased.

"Why—throwing wads in church—lack of respect for religious things—and things like that."

"Oh, I see," said Arthur, his tone dropping a little. "I suppose it was a silly thing to do," he added with a touch of stiffness.

"It was a profane kind of thing," she said, sadly. "Don't you see, Arthur?"

"If I'm such a sinner, I don't see why you have anything to do with me."

It stirred her profoundly that he didn't laugh, scoff at her; she had feared he might. She answered, very gravely:

"It's because I like you. You don't think it's a pleasure to me to find fault with you, do you Arthur?"

"Then why find fault?" he asked good-naturedly.

"But if the faults are THERE?" she persevered.

"Let's forget about 'em, then," he answered with cheerful logic. "Everybody can't be good like YOU, you know."

Missy felt nonplussed, though subtly pleased, in a way. Arthur DID admire her, thought her "good"—perhaps, in time she could be a good influence to him. But at a loss just how to answer his personal allusion, she glanced backward over her shoulder. In the moonlight she saw a tall man back there in the distance.

There was a little pause.

"I don't s'pose you'll be going to the Library again to-morrow night?" suggested Arthur presently.

"Why, I don't know—why?" But she knew "why," and her knowledge gave her a tingle.

"Oh, I was just thinking that if you had to look up some references or something, maybe I might drop around again."

"Maybe I WILL have to—I don't know just yet," she murmured, confused with a sweet kind of confusion.

"Well, I'll just drop by, anyway," he said. "Maybe you'll be there."

"Yes, maybe."

Another pause. Trying to think of something to say, she glanced again over her shoulder. Then she clutched at Arthur's arm.

"Look at that man back there—following us! He looks something like father!"

As she spoke she unconsciously quickened her pace; Arthur consciously quickened his. He knew—as all of the boys of "the crowd" knew—Mr. Merriam's stand on the matter of beaux.

"Oh!" cried Missy under her breath. She fancied that the tall figure had now accelerated his gait, also. "It IS father! I'll cut across this vacant lot and get in at the kitchen door—I can beat him home that way!"

Arthur started to turn into the vacant lot with her, but she gave him a little push.

"No! no! It's just a little way—I won't be afraid. You'd better run, Arthur—he might kill you!"

Arthur didn't want to be killed. "So long, then—let me know how things come out!"—and he disappeared fleetly down the block.

Missy couldn't make such quick progress; the vacant lot had been a cornfield, and the stubby ground was frozen into hard, sharp ridges under the snow. She stumbled, felt her shoes filling with snow, stumbled on, fell down, felt her stocking tear viciously. She glanced over her shoulder—had the tall figure back there on the sidewalk slowed down, too, or was it only imagination? She scrambled to her feet and hurried on—and HE seemed to be hurrying again. She had no time, now, to be afraid of the vague terrors of night; her panic was perfectly and terribly tangible. She MUST get home ahead of father.

Blindly she stumbled on.

At the kitchen door she paused a moment to regain her breath; then, very quietly, she entered. There was a light in the kitchen and she could hear mother doing something in the pantry. She sniffed at the air and called cheerily:

"Been popping corn?"

"Yes," came mother's voice, rather stiffly. "Seems to me you've been a long time finding out about those lessons!"

Not offering to debate that question, nor waiting to appease her sudden craving for pop-corn, Missy moved toward the door.

"Get your wet shoes off at once!" called mother.

"That's just what I was going to do." And she hurried up the back stairs, unbuttoning buttons as she went.

Presently, in her night-dress and able to breathe naturally again, she felt safer. But she decided she'd better crawl into bed. She lay there, listening. It must have been a half-hour later when she heard a cab stop in front of the house, and then the slam of the front door and the sound of father's voice. He had just come in on the 9:23—THAT hadn't been him, after all!

As relief stole over her, drowsiness tugged at her eyelids. But, just as she was dozing off, she was roused by someone's entering the room, bending over her.

"Asleep?"

It was father! Her first sensation was of fear, until she realized his tone was not one to be feared. And, responding to that tenderness of tone, sharp compunctions pricked her. Dear father!—it was horrible to have to deceive him.

"I've brought you a little present from town." He was lighting the gas. "Here!"

Her blinking eyes saw him place a big flat box on the bed. She fumbled at the cords, accepted his proffered pen-knife, and then—oh, dear heaven! There, fluffy, snow-white and alluring, reposed a set of white fox furs!

"S-sh!" he admonished, smiling. "Mother doesn't know about them yet."

"Oh, father!" She couldn't say any more. And the father, smiling at her, thought he understood the emotions which tied her tongue, which underlay her fervent good night kiss. But he could never have guessed all the love, gratitude, repentance, self-abasement and high resolves at that moment welling within her.

He left her sitting up there in bed, her fingers still caressing the silky treasure. As soon as he was gone, she climbed out of bed to kneel in repentant humility.

"Dear Jesus," she prayed, "please forgive me for deceiving my dear father and mother. If you'll forgive me just this once, I promise never, never to deceive them again."

Then, feeling better—prayer, when there is real faith, does lift a load amazingly—she climbed back into bed, with the furs on her pillow.

But she could not sleep. That was natural—so much had happened, and everything seemed so complicated. Everything had been seeming to go against her and here, all of a sudden, everything had turned out her way. She had her white fox furs, much prettier than Genevieve Hicks's—oh, she DID hope they'd let her go to church next Sunday night so she could wear them! And she'd had a serious little talk with Arthur—the way seemed paved for her to exert a really satisfactory influence over him. As soon as she could see him again—Oh, she wished she might wear the furs to the Library to-morrow night! She wished Arthur could see her in them—

A sudden thought brought her up sharp: she couldn't meet him to-morrow night after all—for she never wanted to deceive dear father again. No, she would never sneak off like that any more. Yet it wouldn't be fair to Arthur to let him go there and wait in vain. She ought to let him know, some way. And she ought to let him know, too, that that man wasn't father, after all. What if he was worrying, this minute, thinking she might have been caught and punished. It didn't seem right, while SHE was so happy, to leave poor Arthur worrying like that... Oh, she DID wish he could see her in the furs... Yes, she OUGHT to tell him she couldn't keep the "date"—it would be awful for him to sit there in the Library, waiting and waiting...

She kept up her disturbed ponderings until the house grew dark and still. Then, very quietly, she crept out of bed and dressed herself in the dark. She put on her cloak and hat. After a second's hesitation she added the white fox furs. Then, holding her breath, she stole down the back stairs and out the kitchen door.

The night seemed more fearsomely spectral than ever—it must be terribly late; but she sped through the white silence resolutely. She was glad Arthur's boarding-house was only two blocks away. She knew which was his window; she stood beneath it and softly gave "the crowd's" whistle. Waited—whistled again. There was his window going up at last. And Arthur's tousled head peering out.

"I just wanted to let you know I can't come to the Library after all, Arthur! No!—Don't say anything, now!—I'll explain all about it when I get a chance. And that wasn't father—it turned out all right. No, no!—Don't say anything now! Maybe I'll be in the kitchen to-morrow. Good night!"

Then, while Arthur stared after her amazedly, she turned and scurried like a scared rabbit through the white silence.

As she ran she was wondering whether Arthur had got a really good view of the furs in the moonlight; was resolving to urge him to go to church next Sunday night even if SHE couldn't; was telling herself she mustn't ENTIRELY relinquish her hold on him-for his sake...

So full were her thoughts that she forgot to be much afraid. And the Lord must have been with her, for she reached the kitchen door in safety and regained her own room without detection. In bed once again, a great, soft, holy peace seemed to enfold her. Everything was right with everybody—with father and mother and God and Arthur—everybody.

At the very time she was going off into smiling slumber—one hand nestling in the white fox furs on her pillow—it happened that her father was making half-apologetic explanations to her mother: everything had seemed to come down on the child in a lump—commands against walking and against boys and against going out nights and everything. He couldn't help feeling for the youngster. So he thought he'd bring her the white fox furs she seemed to have set her heart on.

And Mrs. Merriam, who could understand a father's indulgent, sympathetic heart even though—as Missy believed—she wasn't capable of "understanding" a daughter's, didn't have it in her, then, to spoil his pleasure by expounding that wanting furs and wanting beaux were really one and the same evil.

CHAPTER VII. BUSINESS OF BLUSHING

Missy was embroiled in a catastrophe, a tangle of embarrassments and odd complications. Aunt Nettie attributed the blame broadly to "that O'Neill girl"; she asserted that ever since Tess O'Neill had come to live in Cherryvale Missy had been "up to" just one craziness after another. But then Aunt Nettie was an old maid—Missy couldn't imagine her as EVER having been fifteen years old. Mother, who could generally be counted on for tenderness even when she failed to "understand," rather unfortunately centred on the wasp detail—why had Missy just stood there and let it keep stinging her? And Missy felt shy at trying to explain it was because the wasp was stinging her LEG. Mother would be sure to remark this sudden show of modesty in one she'd just been scolding for the lack of it—for riding the pony astride and showing her—

Oh, legs! Missy was in a terrific confusion, as baffled by certain inconsistencies displayed by her own nature as overwhelmed by her disgraceful predicament. For she was certainly sincere in her craving to be as debonairly "athletic" as Tess; yet, during that ghastly moment when the wasp was...

No, she could never explain it to mother. Old people don't understand. Not even to father could she have talked it all out, though he had patted her hand and acted like an angel when he paid for the bucket of candy—that candy which none of them got even a taste of! That Tess and Arthur should eat up the candy which her own father paid for, made one more snarl in the whole inconsistent situation.

It all began with the day Arthur Simpson "dared" Tess to ride her pony into Picker's grocery store. Before Tess had come to live in the sanitarium at the edge of town where her father was head doctor, she had lived in Macon City and had had superior advantages—city life, to Missy, a Cherryvalian from birth, sounded exotic and intriguing. Then Tess in her nature was far from ordinary. She was characterized by a certain dash and fine flair; was inventive, fearless, and possessed the gift of leadership. Missy, seeing how eagerly the other girls of "the crowd" caught up Tess's original ideas, felt enormously flattered when the leader selected such a comparatively stupid girl as herself as a chum.

For Missy thought she must be stupid. She wasn't "smart" in school like Beulah Crosswhite, nor strikingly pretty like Kitty Allen, nor president of the Iolanthians like Mabel Dowd, nor conspicuously popular with the boys like Genevieve Hicks. No, she possessed no distinctive traits anybody could pick out to label her by—at least that is what she thought. So she felt on her mettle; she wished to prove herself worthy of Tess's high regard.

It was rather strenuous living up to Tess. Sometimes Missy couldn't help wishing that her chum were not quite so alert. Being all the while on the jump, mentally and physically, left you somewhat breathless and dizzy; then, too, it didn't leave you time to sample certain quieter yet thrilling enjoyments that came right to hand. For example, now and then, Missy secretly longed to spend a leisurely hour or so just talking with Tess's grandmother. Tess's grandmother, though an old lady, seemed to her a highly romantic figure. Her name was Mrs. Shears and she had lived her girlhood in a New England seaport town, and her father had been captain of a vessel which sailed to and from far Eastern shores. He had brought back from those long-ago voyages bales and bales of splendid Oriental fabrics—stiff rustling silks and slinky clinging crepes and indescribably brilliant brocades shot with silver or with gold. For nearly fifty years Mrs. Shears had worn dresses made from these romantic stuffs and she was wearing them yet—in Cherryvale! They were all made after the same pattern, gathered voluminous skirt and fitted bodice and long flowing sleeves; and, with the small lace cap she always wore on her white hair. Missy thought the old lady looked as if she'd just stepped from the yellow-tinged pages of some fascinating old book. She wished her own grandmother dressed like that; of course she loved Grandma Merriam dearly and really wouldn't have exchanged her for the world, yet, in contrast, she did seem somewhat commonplace.

It was interesting to sit and look at Grandma Shears and to hear her recount the Oriental adventures of her father, the sea captain. But Tess gave Missy little chance to do this. Tess had heard and re-heard the adventures to the point of boredom and custom had caused her to take her grandmother's strange garb as a matter of course; Tess's was a nature which craved—and generally achieved—novelty.

Just now her particular interest veered toward athleticism; she had recently returned from a visit to Macon City and brimmed with colourful tales of its "Country Club" life—swimming, golf, tennis, horseback riding, and so forth. These pursuits she straightway set out to introduce into drowsy, behind-the-times Cherryvale. But in almost every direction she encountered difficulties: there was in Cherryvale no place to swim except muddy Bull Creek—and the girls' mothers unanimously vetoed that; and there were no links for golf; and the girls themselves didn't enthuse greatly over tennis those broiling afternoons. So Tess centred on horseback riding, deciding it was the "classiest" sport, after all. But the old Neds and Nellies of the town, accustomed leisurely to transport their various family surreys, did not metamorphose into hackneys of such spirit and dash as filled Tess's dreams.

Even so, these steeds were formidable enough to Missy. She feared she wasn't very athletic. That was an afternoon of frightful chagrin when she came walking back into Cherryvale, ignominiously following Dr. O'Neill's Ben. Old Ben, who was lame in his left hind foot, had a curious gait, like a sort of grotesque turkey trot. Missy outwardly attributed her inability to keep her seat to Ben's peculiar rocking motion, but in her heart she knew it was simply because she was afraid. What she was afraid of she couldn't have specified. Not of old Ben surely, for she knew him to be the gentlest of horses. When she stood on the ground beside him, stroking his shaggy, uncurried flanks or feeding him bits of sugar, she felt not the slightest fear. Yet the minute she climbed up into the saddle she sickened under the grip of some increasingly heart-stilling panic. Even before Ben started forward; so it wasn't Ben's rocking, lop-sided gait that was really at the bottom of her fear—it only accentuated it. Why was she afraid of Ben up there in the saddle while not in the least afraid when standing beside him? Fear was very strange. Did everybody harbour some secret, absurd, unreasonable fear? No, Tess didn't; Tess wasn't afraid of anything. Tess was cantering along on rawboned Nellie in beautiful unconcern. Missy admired and envied her dreadfully.

Her sense of her own shortcomings became all the more poignant when the little cavalcade, with Missy still ignominiously footing it in the rear, had to pass the group of loafers in front of the Post Office. The loafers called out rude, bantering comments, and Missy burned with shame.

Then Arthur Simpson appeared in Pieker's doorway next door and grinned.

"Hello! Some steed!" he greeted Tess. "Dare you to ride her in!"

"Not to-day, thanks," retorted Tess insouciantly—that was another quality Missy envied in her friend, her unfailing insouciance. "Wait till I get my new pony next week, and then I'll take you up!"

"All right. The dare holds good." Then Arthur turned his grin to Missy. "What's the matter with YOU? Charger get out of hand?"

The loafers in front of the Post Office took time from their chewing and spitting to guffaw. Missy could have died of mortification.

"Want a lift?" asked Arthur, moving forward.

Missy shook her head. She longed to retrieve herself in the public gaze, longed to shine as Tess shone, but not for worlds could she have essayed that high, dizzy seat again. So she shook her head dumbly and Arthur grinned at her not unkindly. Missy liked Arthur Simpson. He wore a big blue-denim apron and had red hair and freckles—not a romantic figure by any means; but there was a mischievous imp in his eye and a rollicking lilt in his voice that made you like him, anyway. Missy wished he hadn't been a witness to her predicament. Not that she felt at all sentimental toward Arthur. Arthur "went with" Genevieve Hicks, a girl whom Missy privately deemed frivolous and light-minded. Besides Missy herself was, at this time, interested in Raymond Bonner, the handsomest boy in "the crowd." Missy liked good looks—they appealed to the imagination or something. And she adored everything that appealed to the imagination: there was, for instance, the picture of Sir Galahad, in shining armour, which hung on the wall of her room—for a time she had almost said her prayers to that picture; and there was a compelling mental image of the gallant Sir Launcelot in "Idylls of the King" and of the stern, repressed, silently suffering Guy in "Airy Fairy Lilian." Also there had recently come into her possession a magazine clipping of the boy king of Spain; she couldn't claim that Alphonso was handsome—in truth he was quite ugly—yet there was something intriguing about him. She secretly treasured the printed likeness and thought about the original a great deal: the alluring life he led, the panoply of courts, royal balls and garden-parties and resplendent military parades, and associating with princes and princesses all the time. She wondered, with a little sigh, whether his "crowd" called him by his first name; though a King he was just a boy—about her own age.

Nevertheless, though Arthur Simpson was neither handsome nor revealed aught which might stir vague, deep currents of romance, Missy regretted that even Arthur had seen her in such a sorry plight. She wished he might see her at a better advantage. For instance, galloping up on a spirited mount, in a modish riding-habit—a checked one with flaring-skirted coat and shining boots and daring but swagger breeches, perhaps!—galloping insouciantly up to take that dare!

But she knew it was an empty dream. Even if she had the swagger togs—a notion mad to absurdity—she could never gallop with insouciance. She wasn't the athletic sort.

At supper she was still somewhat bitterly ruminating her failings.

"Missy, you're not eating your omelet," adjured her mother.

Missy's eyes came back from space.

"I was just wondering—" then she broke off.

"Yes, dear," encouraged mother. Missy's hazy thoughts took a sudden plunge, direct and startling.

"I was wondering if, maybe, you'd give me an old pair of father's trousers."

"What on earth for, child?"

"Just an old pair," Missy went on, ignoring the question. "Maybe that pepper-and-salt pair you said you'd have to give to Jeff."

"But what do you want of them?" persisted mother. "Jeff needs them disgracefully—the last time he mowed the yard I blushed every time he turned his back toward the street."

"I think Mrs. Allen's going to give him a pair of Mr. Allen's—Kitty said she was. So he won't need the pepper-and-salts."

"But what do you want with a pair of PANTS?" Aunt Nettie put in. Missy wished Aunt Nettie had been invited out to supper; Aunt Nettie was relentlessly inquisitive. She knew she must give some kind of answer.

"Oh, just for some fancy-work," she said. She tried to make her tone insouciant, but she was conscious of her cheeks getting hot.

"Fancy-work—pants for fancy-work! For heaven's sake!" ejaculated Aunt Nettie.

Mother, also, was staring at her in surprise. But father, who was a darling, put in: "Give 'em to her if she wants 'em, dear. Maybe she'll make a lambrequin for the piano or an embroidered smoking-jacket for the old man—a'la your Ladies' Home Companion."

He grinned at her, but Missy didn't mind father's jokes at her expense so much as most grown-ups'. Besides she was grateful to him for diverting attention from her secret purpose for the pants.

After supper, out in the summerhouse, it was an evening of such swooning beauty she almost forgot the bothers vexing her life. When you sit and watch the sun set in a bed of pastel glory, and let the level bars of thick gold light steal across the soft slick grass to reach to your very soul, and smell the heavenly sweetness of dew-damp roses, and listen to the shrill yet mournful even-song of the locusts—when you sit very still, just letting it all seep into you and through and through you, such a beatific sense of peace surges over you that, gradually, trivial things like athletic shortcomings seem superficial and remote.

Later, too, up in her room, slowly undressing in the moonlight, she let herself yield to the sweeter spell. She loved her room, especially when but dimly lit by soft white strips of the moon through the window. She loved the dotted Swiss curtains blowing, and the white-valanced little bed, and the white-valanced little dressing-table all dim and misty save where a broad shaft of light gave a divine patch of illumination to undress by. She said her prayers on her knees by the window, where she could keep open but unsacrilegious eyes on God's handiwork outside—the divine miracle of everyday things transformed into shimmering glory.

A soft brushing against her ankles told her that Poppylinda, her cat, had come to say good night. She lifted her pet up to the sill.

"See the beautiful night, Poppy," she said. "See!—it's just like a great, soft, lovely, blue-silver bed!"

Poppy gave a gentle purr of acquiescence. Missy was sure it was acquiescence. She was convinced that Poppy had a fine, appreciative, discriminating mind. Aunt Nettie scouted at this; she denied that she disliked Poppy, but said she "liked cats in their place." Missy knew this meant, of course, that inwardly she loathed cats; that she regarded them merely as something which musses up counterpanes and keeps outlandish hours. Aunt Nettie was perpetually finding fault with Poppy; but Missy had noted that Aunt Nettie and all the others who emphasized Poppy's imperfections were people whom Poppy, in her turn, for some reason could not endure. This point she tried to make once when Poppy had been convicted of a felonious scratch, but of course the grown-ups couldn't follow her reasoning. Long since she'd given up trying to make clear the real merits of her pet; she only knew that Poppy was more loving and lovable, more sympathetic and comprehending, than the majority of humans. She could count on Poppy's never jarring on any mood, whether grave or gay. Poppy adored listening to poetry read aloud, sitting immovable save for slowly blinking eyes for an hour at a stretch. She even had an appreciation for music, often remaining in the parlour throughout her mistress's practice period, and sometimes purring an accompaniment to tunes she especially liked—such tunes as "The Maiden's Prayer" or "Old Black Joe with Variations." There was, too, about her a touch of something which Missy thought must be mysticism; for Poppy heard sounds and saw things which no one else could—following these invisible objects with attentive eyes while Missy saw nothing; then, sometimes, she would get up suddenly, switching her tail, and watch them as they evidently disappeared. But Missy never mentioned Poppy's gift of second sight; she knew the old people would only laugh.

Now she cuddled Poppy in her lap, and with a sense of companionship, enjoyed the landscape of silvered loveliness and peace. A sort of sad enjoyment, but pleasantly sad. Occasionally she sighed, but it was a sigh of deep content. Such things as perching dizzily atop a horse's back, even cantering in graceful insouciance, seemed far, far away.

Yet, after she was in her little white bed, in smiling dreams she saw herself, smartly accoutred in gleaming boots and pepper-and-salt riding-breeches, galloping up to Pieker's grocery and there, in the admiring view of the Post Office loafers and of a dumbfounded Arthur, cantering insouciantly across the sidewalk and into the store!

Her dream might have ended there, nothing more than a fleeting phantasm, had not Tess, the following week, come into possession of Gypsy.

Gypsy was a black pony with a white star on her forehead and a long wavy tail. She was a pony with a personality—from the start Missy recognized the pony as a person just as she recognized Poppy as a person. When Gypsy gazed at you out of those soft, bright eyes, or when she pricked up her ears with an alert listening gesture, or when she turned her head and switched her tail with nonchalant unconcern—oh, it is impossible to describe the charm of Gypsy. That was it—"charm"; and the minute Missy laid eyes on the darling she succumbed to it. She had thought herself absurdly but deep-rootedly afraid of all horseflesh, but Gypsy didn't seem a mere horse. She was pert, coquettish, coy, loving, inquisitive, naughty; both Tess and Missy declared she had really human intelligence.

She began to manifest this the very day of her arrival. After Tess had ridden round the town and shown off properly, she left the pony in the sideyard of the sanitarium while she and Missy slipped off to the summerhouse to enjoy a few stolen chapters from "The Duchess." There was high need for secrecy for, most unreasonably, "The Duchess" had been put under a parental ban; moreover Tess feared there were stockings waiting to be darned.

Presently they heard Mrs. O'Neill calling, but they just sat still, stifling their giggles. Gypsy, who had sauntered up to the summerhouse door, poked in an inquisitive nose. Mrs. O'Neill didn't call again, so Tess whispered: "She thinks we've gone over to your house—we can go on reading."

After a while Missy glanced up and nudged Tess. "Gypsy's still there—just standing and looking at us! See her bright eyes—the darling!"

"Yes, isn't she cute?" agreed Tess.

But, just at that, a second shadow fell athwart the sunny sward, a hand pushed Gypsy's head from the opening, and Mrs. O'Neill's voice said:

"If you girls don't want your whereabouts given away, you'd better teach that pony not to stand with her head poked in the door for a half-hour without budging!"

The ensuing scolding wasn't pleasant, but neither of the miscreants had the heart to blame Gypsy. She was so cute.

She certainly was cute.

The second day of her ownership Tess judged it necessary to give Gypsy a switching; Gypsy declined to be saddled and went circling round and round the yard in an abandon of playfulness. So Tess snapped off a peach-tree switch and, finally cornering the pony, proceeded to use it. Missy pleaded, but Tess stood firm for discipline. However Gypsy revenged herself; for two hours she wouldn't let Tess come near her—she'd sidle up and lay her velvet nose against Missy's shoulder until Tess was within an arm's length, and then, tossing her head spitefully, caper away.

No wonder the girls ejaculated at her smartness.

Finally she turned gentle as a lamb, soft as silk, and let Tess adjust the saddle; but scarcely had Tess ridden a block before—wrench!—something happened to the saddle, and Tess was left seated by the roadside while Gypsy vanished in a cloud of dust. The imp had deliberately swelled herself out so that the girth would be loose!

Every day brought new revelations of Gypsy's intelligence. Missy took to spending every spare minute at Tess's. Under this new captivation her own pet, Poppy, was thoughtlessly neglected. And duties such as practicing, dusting and darning were deliberately shirked. Even reading had lost much of its wonted charm: the haunting, soul-swelling rhythms of poetry, or the oddly phrased medieval romances which somehow carried you back through the centuries—into the very presence of those queenly heroines who trail their robes down the golden stairways of legend. But Missy's feet seemed to have forgotten the familiar route to the Public Library and, instead, ever turned eagerly toward the O'Neills'—that is, toward the O'Neills' barn.

And, if she had admired Tess before, she worshipped her now for so generously permitting another to share the wonderful pony—it was like being a half owner. And the odd thing was that, though Gypsy had undeniable streaks of wildness, Missy never felt a tremor while on her. On Gypsy she cantered, she trotted, she galloped, just as naturally and enjoyably as though she had been born on horseback. Then one epochal day, emulating Tess's example, she essayed to ride astride. It was wonderful. She could imagine herself a Centaur princess. And, curiously, she felt not at all embarrassed. Yet she was glad that, back there in the lot, she was screened by the big barn from probably critical eyes.

But Gypsy made an unexpected dart into the barn-door, through the barn, and out into the yard, before Missy realized the capricious creature's intent. And, as luck would have it, the Reverend MacGill was sitting on the porch, calling on Grandma Shears. If only it had been anybody but Rev. MacGill! Missy cherished a secret but profound admiration for Rev. MacGill; he had come recently to Cherryvale and was younger than ministers usually are and, though not exactly handsome, had fascinating dark glowing eyes. Now, as his eyes turned toward her, she suddenly prickled with embarrassment—her legs were showing to her knees! She tried vainly to pull down her skirt, then tried to head Gypsy toward the barn. But Grandma Shears, in scandalized tones, called out:

"Why, Melissa Merriam! Get down off that horse immediately!"

Shamefacedly Missy obeyed, but none too gracefully since her legs were not yet accustomed to that straddling position.

"What in the world will you girls be up to next?" Grandma Shears went on, looking like an outraged Queen Victoria. "I don't know what this generation's coming to," she lamented, turning to the minister. "Young girls try to act like hoodlums—deliberately TRY! In my day girls were trained to be—and desired to be—little ladies."

Little ladies!—in the minister's presence, the phrase didn't fall pleasantly on Missy's ear.

"Oh, they don't mean any harm," he replied. "Just a little innocent frolic."

There was a ghost of a twinkle in his eyes. Missy didn't know whether to be grateful for his tolerance or only more chagrined because he was laughing at her. She stood, feeling red as a beet, while Grandma Shears retorted:

"Innocent frolic—nonsense! I'll speak to my daughter!" Then, to Missy: "Now take that pony back to the lot, please, and let's see no more such disgraceful exhibitions!"

Missy felt as though she'd been whipped. She felt cold all over and shivered, as she led Gypsy back, though she knew she was blushing furiously. Concealed behind the barn door, peeping through a crack, was Tess.

"It was awful!" moaned Missy. "I can never face Rev. MacGill again!"

"Oh, he's a good sport," said Tess.

"She gave me an awful calling down."

"Oh, grandma's an old fogy." Missy had heard Tess thus pigeonhole her grandmother often before, but now, for the first time, she didn't feel a little secret repugnance for the rude classification.

Grandma Shears WAS old-fogyish. But it wasn't her old-fogyishness, per se, that irritated; it was the fact that her old-fogyishness had made her "call down" Missy—in front of the minister. Just as if Missy were a child. Fifteen is not a child, to itself. And it can rankle and burn, when a pair of admired dark eyes are included in the situation, just as torturesomely as can twice fifteen.

The Reverend MacGill was destined to play another unwitting part in Missy's athletic drama which was so jumbled with ecstasies and discomfitures. A few days later he was invited to the Merriams' for supper. Missy heard of his coming with mingled emotions. Of course she thrilled at the prospect of eating at the same table with him—listening to a person at table, and watching him eat, gives you a singular sense of intimacy. But there was that riding astride episode. Would he, maybe, mention it and cause mother to ask questions? Maybe not, for he was, as Tess had said, a "good sport." But all the same he'd probably be thinking of it; if he should look at her again with that amused twinkle, she felt she would die of shame.

That afternoon she had been out on Gypsy and, chancing to ride by home on her way back to the sanitarium barn, was hailed by her mother.

"Missy! I want you to gather some peaches!"

"Well, I'll have to take Gypsy home first."

"No, you won't have time—it's after five already, and I want to make a deep-dish peach pie. I hear Rev. MacGill's especially fond of it. You can take Gypsy home after supper. Now hurry up!—I'm behindhand already."

So Missy led Gypsy into the yard and took the pail her mother brought out to her.

"The peaches aren't quite ripe," said mother, with a little worried pucker, "but they'll have to do. They have some lovely peaches at Picker's, but papa won't hear of my trading at Picker's any more."

Missy thought it silly of her father to have curtailed trading at Picker's—she missed Arthur's daily visit to the kitchen door with the delivery-basket—merely because Mr. Picker had beaten father for election on the Board of Aldermen. Father explained it was a larger issue than party politics; even had Picker been a Republican he'd have fought him, he said, for everyone knew Picker was abetting the Waterworks graft. But Missy didn't see why that should keep him from buying things from Picker's which mother really needed; mother said it was "cutting off your nose to spite your face."

Philosophizing on the irrationality of old people, she proceeded to get enough scarcely-ripe peaches for a deep-dish pie. Being horribly afraid of climbing, she used the simple expedient of grasping the lower limbs of the tree and shaking down the fruit.

"Missy!" called mother's voice from the dining room window. "That horse is slobbering all over the peaches!" "I can't help it—she follows me every place."

"Then you'll have to tie her up!"

"Tess never ties her up in THEIR yard!"

"Well, I won't have him slobbering over the fruit," repeated mother firmly.

"I'll—climb the tree," said Missy desperately.

And she did. She was in mortal terror—every second she was sure she was going to fall—but she couldn't bear the vision of Gypsy's reproachful eyes above a strangling halter; Gypsy shouldn't think her hostess, so to speak, less kind than her own mistress.

The peach pie came out beautifully and the supper promised to be a great success. Mother had zealously ascertained Rev. MacGill's favourite dishes, and was flushed but triumphant; she came of a devout family that loved to feed preachers well. And everyone was in fine spirits; only Missy, at the first, had a few bad moments. WOULD he mention it? He might think it his duty, think that mother should know. It was maybe his duty to tell. Preachers have a sterner creed of duty than other people, of course. She regarded him anxiously from under the veil of her lashes, wondering what would happen if he did tell. Mother would be horribly ashamed, and she herself would be all the more ashamed because mother was. Aunt Nettie would be satirically disapproving and say cutting things. Father would probably just laugh, but later he'd be serious and severe. And not one of them would ever, ever understand.

As the minutes went by, her strain of suspense gradually lessened. Rev. MacGill was chatting away easily—about the delicious chicken-stuffing and quince jelly, and the election, and the repairs on the church steeple, and things like that. Now and then he caught Missy's eye, but his expression for her was exactly the same as for the others—no one could suspect there was any secret between them. He WAS a good sport!

Once a shadow passed outside the window. Gypsy! Missy saw that he saw, and, as his glance came back to rest upon herself, for a second her heart surged. But something in his eyes—she couldn't define exactly what it was save that it was neither censorious nor quizzical—subtly gave her reassurance. It was as if he had told her in so many words that everything was all right, for her not to worry the least little bit. All of a sudden she felt blissfully at peace. She smiled at him for no reason at all, and he smiled back—a nice, not at all amused kind of smile. Oh, he was a perfect brick! And what glorious eyes he had! And that fascinating habit of flinging his hair back with a quick toss of the head. How gracefully he used his hands. And what lovely, distinguished table manners—she must practice that trick of lifting your napkin, delicately and swiftly, so as to barely touch your lips. She ate her own food in a kind of trance, unaware of what she was eating; yet it was like eating supper in heaven.

And then, at the very end, something terrible happened. Marguerite had brought in the pie'ce de re'sistance, the climactic dish toward which mother had built the whole meal—the deep-dish peach pie, sugar-coated, fragrant and savory—and placed it on the serving-table near the open window. There was a bit, of wire loose at the lower end of the screen, and, in the one second Marguerite's back was turned—just one second, but just long enough—Missy saw a velvety nose fumble with the loose wire, saw a sleek neck wedge itself through the crevice, and a long red tongue lap approvingly over the sugar-coated crust.

Missy gasped audibly. Mother followed her eyes, turned, saw, jumped up—but it was too late. Mrs. Merriam viciously struck at Gypsy's muzzle and pushed the encroaching head back through the aperture.

"Get away from here!" she cried angrily. "You little beast!"

"I think the pony shows remarkably good taste," commented Rev. MacGill, trying to pass the calamity off as a joke. But his hostess wasn't capable of an answering smile; she gazed despairingly, tragically, at the desecrated confection.

"I took such pains with it," she almost wailed. "It was a deep-dish peach pie—I made it specially for Mr. MacGill."

"Well, I'm not particularly fond of peach pie, anyway," said the minister, meaning to be soothing.

"Oh, but I know you ARE! Mrs. Allen said that at her house you took two helpings-that you said it was your favourite dessert."

The minister coughed a little cough—he was caught in a somewhat delicate situation; then, always tactful, replied: "Perhaps I did say that—her peach pie was very good. But I'm equally fond of all sweets—I have a sweet tooth."

At this point Missy gathered her courage to quaver a suggestion. "Couldn't you just take off the top crust, mother? Gypsy didn't touch the underneath part. Why can't you just—"

But her mother's scandalized look silenced her. She must have made a faux pas. Father and Rev. MacGill laughed outright, and Aunt Nettie smiled a withering smile.

"That's a brilliant idea," she said satirically. "Perhaps you'd have us pick out the untouched bits of the crust, too!" Missy regarded her aunt reproachfully but helplessly; she was too genuinely upset for any repartee. Why did Aunt Nettie like to put her "in wrong"? Her suggestion seemed to her perfectly reasonable. Why didn't they act on it? But of course they'd ignore it, just making fun of her now but punishing her afterward. For she divined very accurately that they would hold her accountable for Gypsy's blunder—even though the blunder was rectifiable; it was a BIG pie, and most of it as good as ever. They were unreasonable, unjust.

Mother seemed unable to tear herself away from the despoiled masterpiece.

"Come, mamma," said father, "it's nothing to make such a fuss about. Just trot out some of that apple sauce of yours. Mr. MacGill doesn't get to taste anything like that every day." He turned to the minister. "The world's full of apple sauce—but there's apple sauce and apple sauce. Now my wife's apple sauce is APPLE SAUCE! I tell her it's a dish for a king."

And Rev. MacGill, after sampling the impromptu dessert, assured his hostess that her husband's eulogy had been only too moderate. He vowed he had never eaten such apple sauce. But Mrs. Merriam still looked bleak. She knew she could make a better deep-dish peach pie than Mrs. Allen could. And, then, to give the minister apple sauce and nabiscos!—the first time he had eaten at her table in two months!

Missy, who knew her mother well, couldn't help feeling a deep degree of sympathy; besides, she wished Rev. MacGill might have had his pie—she liked Rev. MacGill better than ever. But she dreaded her first moments after the guest had departed; mother could be terribly stern.

Nor did her fears prove groundless.

"Now, Missy," ordered her mother in coldly irate tones, "you take that horse straight back to Tess. This is the last straw! For days you've been no earthly use—your practicing neglected, no time for your chores, just nothing but that everlasting horse!"

That everlasting horse! Missy's chin quivered and her eyes filled. But mother went on inflexibly: "I don't want you ever to bring it here again. And you can't go on living at Tess's, either! We'll see that you catch up with your practicing."

"But, mother," tremulously seeking for an argument, "I oughtn't to give up such a fine chance to become a horsewoman, ought I?"

It was an unlucky phrase, for Aunt Nettie was there to catch it up.

"A horsewoman!" and she laughed in sardonic glee. "Well, I must admit there's one thing horsey enough about you—you always smell of manure, these days."

Wounded and on the defensive, Missy tried to make her tone chilly. "I wish you wouldn't be so indelicate, Aunt Nettie," she said.

But Aunt Nettie wasn't abashed. "A horsewoman!" she chortled again. "I suppose Missy sees herself riding to hounds! All dressed up in a silk hat and riding-breeches like pictures of society people back East!"

It didn't add to Missy's comfiture to know she had, in truth, harboured this ridiculed vision of herself. She coloured and stood hesitant.

"Someone ought to put pants on that O'Neill girl, anyway," continued Aunt Nettie with what seemed to her niece unparallelled malice. "Helen Alison says the Doctor saw her out in the country riding astraddle. Her mother ought to spank her."

Mother looked at Missy sharply. "Don't let me ever hear of YOU doing anything like that!"

Missy hung her head, but luckily mother took it for just a general attitude of dejection. "I can't tolerate tomboys." she went on. "I can't imagine what's come over you lately."

"It's that O'Neill girl," said Aunt Nettie.

Mother sighed; Missy couldn't know she was lamenting the loss of her sweet, shy, old-fashioned little girl. But when she spoke next her accents were firm.

"Now you go and take that horse home. But come straight back and get to bed so you can get an early start at your practicing in the morning. Right here I'm going to put my foot down. It isn't because I want to be harsh—but you never seem to know when to stop a thing. It's all well and good to be fond of dumb animals, but when it comes to a point where you can think of nothing else—"

The outstanding import of the terrific and unjust tirade was that Missy should not go near the sanitarium or the pony for a week.

When mother "put her foot down" like that, hope was gone, indeed. And a whole week! That was a long, long time when hope is deferred—especially when one is fifteen and all days are long. At first Missy didn't see how she was ever to live through the endless period, but, strangely enough, the dragging days brought to her a change of mood. It is odd how the colour of our mood, so to speak, can utterly change; how one day we can desire one kind of thing acutely and then, the very next day, crave something quite different.

One morning Missy awoke to a dawn of mildest sifted light and bediamonded dew upon the grass; soft plumes of silver, through the mist, seemed to trim the vines of the summerhouse and made her catch her breath in ecstasy. All of a sudden she wanted nothing so much as to get a book and steal off alone somewhere. The right kind of a book, of course—something sort of strange and sad that would make your strange, sad feelings mount up and up inside you till you could almost die of your beautiful sorrow.

As soon as her routine of duties was finished she gained permission to go to the Library. As she walked slowly, musingly, down Maple Avenue, her emotions were fallow ground for every touch of Nature: the slick greensward of all the lawns, glistening under the torrid azure of the great arched sky, made walking along the shady sidewalk inexpressibly sweet; the many-hued flowers in all the flowerbeds seemed to sing out their vying colours; the strong hard wind passed almost visible fingers through the thick, rustling mane of the trees. Oh, she hoped she would find the right kind of book!

Mother, back on the porch, looked up from her sewing to watch the disappearing figure, and smiled.

"We have our little girl back again," she observed to Aunt Nettie.

"I wish that O'Neill girl'd move away," Aunt Nettie said. "Missy's a regular chameleon."

It's a pity Missy couldn't hear her new classification; it would have interested her tremendously; she was always interested in the perplexing vagaries of her own nature. However, at the Library, she was quite happy: for she found two books, each the right kind, though different. One was called "Famous Heroines of Medieval Legend." They all had names of strange beauty and splendour—Guinevere—Elaine—Vivien—names which softly rustled in syllables of silken brocade. The other book was no less satisfying. It was a book of poems—wonderful poems, by a man named Swinburne—lilting, haunting things of beauty which washed through her soul like the waves of a sun-bejewelled sea. She read the choicest verses over and over till she knew them by heart:

Before the beginning of years, there came to the making of man Grief with her gift of tears, and Time with her glass that ran...

and, equally lovely:

From too much love of living, from hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving whatever gods may be That no life lives forever; that dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea...

The verses brought her beautiful, stirring thoughts to weave into verses of her own when she should find a quiet hour in the summerhouse; or to incorporate into soul-soothing improvisings at the piano.

Next morning, after her hour's stint at finger exercises, she improvised and it went beautifully. She knew it was a success both because of her exalted feelings and because Poppy meowed out in discordant disapproval only once; the rest of the time Poppy purred as appreciatively as for "The Maiden's Prayer." Dear Poppy! Missy felt suddenly contrite for her defection from faithful Poppy. And Poppy was getting old—Aunt Nettie said she'd already lived much longer than most cats. She might die soon. Through a swift blur of tears Missy looked out toward the summerhouse where, beneath the ramblers, she decided Poppy should be buried. Poor Poppy! The tears came so fast she couldn't wipe them away. She didn't dream that Swinburne was primarily responsible for those tears.

Yet even her sadness held a strange, poignant element of bliss. It struck her, oddly, that she was almost enjoying her week of punishment—that she WAS enjoying it. Why was she enjoying it, since, when mother first banned athletic pursuits, she had felt like a martyr? It was queer. She pondered the mysterious complexity of her nature.

There passed two more days of this inexplicable content. Then came the thunder-storm. It was, perhaps, the thunder-storm that really deserves the blame for Missy's climactic athletic catastrophe. No lightning-bolt struck, yet that thunder-storm indubitably played its part in Missy's athletic destiny. It was the causation of renewed turmoil after time of peace.

Tess had telephoned that morning and asked Missy to accompany her to the Library. But Missy had to practice. In her heart she didn't really care to go, for, after her stint was finished, she was contemplating some new improvisings. However, the morning didn't go well. It was close and sultry and, though she tried to make her fingers march and trot and gallop as the exercises dictated, something in the oppressive air set her nerves to tingling. Besides it grew so dark she couldn't see the notes distinctly. Finally she abandoned her lesson; but even improvising failed of its wonted charm. Her fingers kept striking the wrong keys. Then a sudden, ear-splitting thunder-clap hurled her onto a shrieking discord.

She jumped up from the piano; she was horribly afraid of thunder-storms—mother wouldn't mind if she stopped till the storm was over. She longed to go and sit close to mother, to feel the protection of her presence; but, despite the general softening of her mood, she had maintained a certain stiffness toward the family. So she crouched on a sofa in the darkest corner of the room, hiding her eyes, stopping her ears.

Then a sudden thought brought her bolt upright. Gypsy! Tess had said Gypsy was afraid of thunder-storms—awfully afraid. And Gypsy was all alone in that big, gloomy barn—Tess blocks away at the Library.

She tried to hide amongst the cushions again, but visions of Gypsy, with her bright inquisitive eyes, her funny little petulances, her endearing cajoleries, kept rising before her. She felt a stab of remorse; that she could have let even the delights of reading and improvising compensate for separation from such a darling pony. She had been selfish, selfcentred. And now Gypsy was alone in that old barn, trembling and neighing...

Finally, unable to endure the picture longer, she crept out to the hall. She could hear mother and Aunt Nettie in the sitting-room—she couldn't get an umbrella from the closet. So, without umbrella or hat, she stole out the front door. Above was a continuous network of flame as though someone were scratching immense matches all over the surface of heaven, but doggedly she ran on. The downpour caught her, but on she sped though rain and hail hammered her head, blinded her eyes, and drove her drenched garments against her flesh.

She found Gypsy huddled quivering and taut in a corner of the stall. She put her arms round the satiny neck, and they mutely comforted each other. It was thus that Tess discovered them; she, too, had run to Gypsy though it had taken longer as she had farther to go; but she was not so wet as Missy, having borrowed an umbrella at the Library.

"I didn't wait to get an umbrella," Missy couldn't forebear commenting, slightly slurring the truth.

Tess seemed a bit annoyed. "Well, you didn't HAVE to go out in the rain anyway. Guess I can be depended on to look out for my own pony, can't I?"

But Missy's tactful rejoinder that she'd only feared Tess mightn't be able to accomplish the longer distance, served to dissipate the shadow of jealousy. Before the summer storm had impetuously spent itself, the friends were crowded companionably in the feed-box, feeding the reassured Gypsy peppermint sticks—Tess had met Arthur Simpson on her way to the Library—and talking earnestly.

The earnest talk was born of an illustration Tess had seen in a magazine at the Library. It was a society story and the illustration showed the heroine in riding costume.

"She looked awfully swagger," related Tess. "Flicking her crop against her boot, and a derby hat and stock-collar and riding-breeches. I think breeches are a lot more swagger than habits."

"Do you think they're a little bit—indelicate?" ventured Missy, remembering her mother's recent invective against tomboys.

"Of course not!" denied Tess disdainfully. "Valerie Jones in Macon City wears 'em and she's awfully swell. Her father's a banker. She's in the thick of things at the Country Club. It's depasse to ride side-saddle, anyway."

Missy was silent; even when she felt herself misunderstood by her family and maltreated, she had a bothersome conscience.

"There's no real class to riding horseback," Tess went on, "unless you're up to date. You got to be up to date. Of course Cherryvale's slow, but that's no reason we've got to be slow, is it?"

"No-o," agreed Missy hesitantly. But she was emboldened to mention her father's discarded pepper-and-salt trousers. At the first she didn't intend really to appropriate them, but Tess caught up the idea enthusiastically. She immediately began making concrete plans and, soon, Missy caught her fervour. That picture of herself as a dashing, fearless horsewoman had come to life again.

When she got home, mother, looking worried, was waiting for her.

"Where on earth have you been? Look at that straggly hair! And that dress, fresh just this morning—limp as a dish-rag!"

Missy tried to explain, but the anxiety between mother's eyes deepened to lines of crossness.

"For heaven's sake! To go rushing off like that without a rain-coat or even an umbrella! And you pretend to be afraid of thunder-storms! Now, Missy, it isn't because you've ruined your dress or likely caught your death of cold—but to think you'd wilfully disobey me! What on earth AM I to do with you?"

She made Missy feel like an unregenerate sinner. And Missy liked her stinging, smarting sensations no better because she felt she didn't deserve them. That heavy sense of injustice somewhat deadened any pricks of guilt when, later, she stealthily removed the pepper-and-salts from the upstairs store-closet.

But Aunt Nettie's eagle eyes chanced to see her. She went to Mrs. Merriam.

"What do you suppose Missy wants of those old pepper-and-salt pants?"

"I don't know, Nettie. Why?"

"She's just sneaked 'em off to her room. When she saw me coming up the stairs, she scampered as if Satan was after her. What DO you suppose she wants of them?"

"I can't imagine," repeated Mrs. Merriam. "Maybe she hardly knows herself—girls that age are like a boiling tea-kettle; you know; their imagination keeps bubbling up and spilling over, and then disappears into vapour. I sometimes think we bother Missy too much with questions—she doesn't know the answers herself."

Mrs. Merriam was probably feeling the compunctions mothers often feel after they have scolded.

Aunt Nettie sniffed a little, but Missy wasn't questioned. And now the scene of our story may shift to a sunny morning, a few days later, and to the comparative seclusion of the sanitarium barn. There has been, for an hour or more, a suppressed sound of giggles, and Gypsy, sensing excitement in the air, stands with pricked-up ears and bright, inquisitive eyes. Luckily there has been no intruder—just the three of them, Gypsy and Missy and Tess.

"You're wonderful—simply wonderful! It's simply too swagger for words!" It was Tess speaking.

Missy gazed down at herself. It WAS swagger, she assured herself. It must be swagger—Tess said so. Almost as swagger, Tess asseverated, as the riding outfit worn by Miss Valerie Jones who was the swaggerest member of Macon City's swaggerest young set. Yet, despite her assurance of swaggerness, she was conscious of a certain uneasiness. She knew she shouldn't feel embarrassed; she should feel only swagger. But she couldn't help a sense of awkwardness, almost of distaste; her legs felt—and LOOKED—so queer! So conspicuous! The upper halves of them were clothed in two separate envelopments of pepper-and-salt material, gathered very full and puffy over the hips but drawn in tightly toward the knee in a particularly swagger fashion. Below the knee the swagger tight effect was sustained by a pair of long buttoned "leggings."

"You're sure these leggings look all right?" she demanded anxiously.

"Of course they look all right! They look fine!"

"I wish we had some boots," with a smothered sigh.

"Well, they don't ALWAYS wear boots. Lots of 'em in Macon City only wore puttees. And puttees are only a kind of leggings."

"They're so tight," complained the horsewoman. "My legs have got a lot fatter since—"

Thrusting out one of the mentioned members in a tentative kick, she was interrupted by the popping of an already overstrained button.

"SEE!" she finished despondently. "I SAID they were too tight."

"You oughtn't to kick around that way," reproved Tess. "No wonder it popped off. Now, I'll have to hunt for a safety-pin—"

"I don't want a safety-pin!—I'd rather let it flop."

The horsewoman continued to survey herself dubiously, took in the bright scarlet sweater which formed the top part of her costume. The girls had first sought a more tailored variety of coat, but peres Merriam and O'Neill were both, selfishly, very large men; Tess had brilliantly bethought the sweater—the English always wore scarlet for hunting, anyway. Missy then had warmly applauded the inspiration, but now her warmth was literal rather than figurative; it was a hot day and the sweater was knitted of heavy wool. She fingered her stock collar—one of Mrs. O'Neill's guest towels—and tried to adjust her derby more securely.

"Your father has an awfully big head," she commented. "Oh, they always wear their hats way down over their ears." Then, a little vexed at this necessity for repeated reassurance, Tess broke out irritably:

"If you don't want to wear the get-up, say so! I'LL wear it! I only let you wear it first trying to be nice to you!"

Then Missy, who had been genuinely moved by Tess's decision that the first wearing of the costume should make up for her chum's week of punishment, pulled herself together.

"Of course I want to wear it," she declared. "I think it's just fine of you to let me wear it first."

She spoke sincerely; yet, within the hour, she was plotting to return her friend's sacrifice with a sort of mean trick. Perhaps it was fit and just that the trick turned topsy-turvy on herself as it did. Yet the notion did not come to her in the guise of a trick on Tess. No; it came just as a daring, dashing, splendid feat in which she herself should triumphantly figure—she scarcely thought of Tess at all.

It came upon her, in all its dazzling possibilities, while she was cantering along the old road which runs back of Smith's woods. She and Tess had agreed it would be best, till they'd "broke in" Cherryvale to the novelty of breeches, to keep to unfrequented roads. But it was the inconspicuousness of the route, the lack of an admiring audience, which gave birth to Missy's startling Idea. Back in the barn she'd felt self-conscious. But now she was getting used to her exposed legs. And doing really splendidly on Dr. O'Neill's saddle. Sitting there astride, swaying in gentle rhythm with Gypsy's springing motion she began to feel truly dashing, supremely swagger. She seemed lifted out of herself, no longer timid, commonplace, unathletic Missy Merriam, but exalted into a sort of free-and-easy, Princess Royal of Swaggerdom. She began to wish someone might see her...

Then startling, compelling, tantalizing, came the Idea. Why not ride openly back into Cherryvale, right up Main Street, right by the Post Office? All those old loafers would see her who'd laughed the day she tumbled off of Ned. Well, they'd laugh the other way, now. And Arthur Simpson, too. Maybe she'd even ride into Pieker's store!—that certainly would surprise Arthur. True it was Tess he'd "dared," but of course he had not dreamed SHE, Missy, would ever take it up. He considered her unathletic—sort of ridiculous. Wouldn't it be great to "show" him? She visioned the amazement, the admiration, the respect, which would shine in his eyes as, insouciantly and yet with dash, she deftly manoeuvred Gypsy's reins and cantered right into the store!

Afterwards she admitted that a sort of madness must have seized her; yet, as she raced back toward the town, gently swaying in unison with her mount, her pepper-and-salt legs pressing the pony's sides with authority, she felt complacently, exultantly sane.

And still so when, blithe and debonair, she galloped up Main Street, past piazzas she pleasurably sensed were not unpeopled nor unimpressed; past the Court House whence a group of men were emerging and stopped dead to stare; past the Post Office where a crowd awaiting the noon mail swelled the usual bunch of loafers; on to Pieker's where, sure enough, Arthur stood in the door!

"Holy cats!" he ejaculated. "Where in the world did—"

"Dare me to ride in the store?" demanded Missy, flicking the air with her crop and speaking insouciantly. She was scarcely aware of the excited sounds from the Post Office, for as yet her madness was upon her.

"Oh, I don't think you could get her in!—You'd better not try!"

Missy exulted—he looked as if actually afraid she might attempt it! As a matter of fact Arthur was afraid; he was afraid Missy Merriam had suddenly gone out of her head. There was a queer look in her eyes—she didn't look herself at all. He was afraid she might really do that crazy stunt; and he was afraid the boss might return from lunch any second, and catch her doing it and blame HIM! Yes, Arthur Simpson was afraid; and Missy's blood sang at the spectacle of happy-go-lucky Arthur reduced to manifest anxiety.

"CAN'T get her in?" she retorted derisively. "Just watch me!"

And, patting Gypsy's glossy neck, she headed her mount directly toward the sidewalk and clattered straight into Pieker's store.

Arthur had barely time to jump out of the way. "Holy cats!" he again invoked fervently. Then: "Head her out!—She's slobbering over that bucket of candy!"

True enough; Gypsy's inquisitive nose had led her to a bewildering profusion of the sweets she adored; not just meagre little bits, doled out to her stingily bite by bite. And, as if these delectables had been set out for a special and royal feast, Gypsy tasted this corner and sampled that, in gourmandish abandon.

"For Pete's sake!" implored Arthur, feverishly tugging at the bridle. "Get her out! The old man's liable to get back any minute!—He won't do a thing to me!"

Missy, then, catching some of his perturbation, slapped with the reins, stroked Gypsy's neck, exhorted her with endearments and then with threats. But Gypsy wouldn't budge; she was having, unexpectedly but ecstatically, the time of her career. Missy climbed down; urged and cajoled, joined Arthur in tugging at the bridle. Gypsy only planted her dainty forefeet and continued her repast in a manner not dainty at all. Missy began to feel a little desperate; that former fine frenzy, that divine madness, that magnificent tingle of aplomb and dash, was dwindling away. She was conscious of a crowd collecting in the doorway; there suddenly seemed to be millions of people in the store—rude, pushing, chortling phantoms as in some dreadful nightmare. Hot, prickling waves began to wash over her. They were laughing at her. Spurred by the vulgar guffaws she gave another frantic tug—

Oh, dear heaven! The upper air suddenly thickened with sounds of buzzing conflict—a family of mud-wasps, roused by the excitement, were circling round and round! She saw them in terrified fascination—they were scattering!—zizzing horribly, threateningly as they swooped this way and that! Heavens!—that one brushed her hand. She tried to shrink back—then gave an anguished squeal.

WHAT WAS THAT? But she knew what it was. In petrified panic she stood stock-still, rooted. She was afraid to move lest it sting her more viciously. She could feel it exploring around—up near her hip now, now crawling downward, now for a second lost in some voluminous fold. She found time to return thanks that her breeches had been cut with that smart bouffance. Then she cringed as she felt it again. How had It got in there? The realization that she must have torn her pepper-and-salts, for a breath brought embarrassment acutely to the fore; then, as that tickling promenade over her anatomy was resumed, she froze under paramount fear.

"For Pete's sake!" shouted Arthur. "Don't just stand there!—can't you do SOMETHING?"

But Missy could do nothing. Removing Gypsy was no longer the paramount issue. Ready to die of shame but at the same time engripped by deadly terror, she stood, legs wide apart, for her life's sake unable to move. She had lost count of time, but was agonizedly aware of its passage; she seemed to stand there in that anguished stupor for centuries. In reality it was but a second before she heard Arthur's voice again:

"For Heaven's sake!" he muttered, calamity's approach intensifying his abjurgations. "There's the old man!"

Apprehensively, abasedly, but with legs still stolidly apart, Missy looked up. Yes, there was Mr. Picker, elbowing his way through the crowd. Then an icy trickle chilled her spine; following Mr. Picker, carrying his noon mail, was Rev. MacGill.

"Here!—What's this?" demanded Mr. Picker.

Then she heard Arthur, that craven-hearted, traitor-souled being she had once called "friend," that she had even desired to impress,—she heard him saying:

"I don't know, Mr. Picker. She just came riding in—"

Mr. Picker strode to the centre of the stage and, by a simple expedient strangely unthought-of before—by merely pulling away the bucket, separated Gypsy from the candy.

Then he turned to Missy and eyed her disapprovingly.

"I think you'd better be taking the back cut home. If I was your mamma, I'd give you a good spanking and put you to bed."

Spanking! Oh, shades of insouciance and swagger! And with Rev. MacGill standing there hearing—and seeing! Tears rolled down over her blushes.

"Here, I'll help you get her out," said Rev. MacGill, kindly. Missy blessed him for his kindness, yet, just then, she felt she'd rather have been stung to death than to have had him there. But he was there, and he led Gypsy, quite tractable now the candy was gone, and herself looking actually embarrassed, through the crowd and back to the street.

High moments have a way, sometimes, of resolving their prime and unreducible factors, all of a sudden, to disconcertingly simple terms. Here was Gypsy, whose stubbornness had begun it all, suddenly soft as silk; and there was the wasp, who had brought on the horrendous climax, suddenly and mysteriously vanished. Of course Missy was glad the wasp was gone—otherwise she might have stood there, dying of shame, till she did die of shame—yet the sudden solution of her dilemma made her feel in another way absurd.

But there was little room for such a paltry emotion as absurdity. Rev. MacGill volunteered to deliver Gypsy to her stall—oh, he was wonderful, though she almost wished he'd have to leave town unexpectedly; she didn't see how she'd ever face him again—but she knew there was a reckoning waiting at home.

It was a painful and unforgettable scene. Mother had heard already; father had telephoned from the office. Missy supposed all Cherryvale was telephoning but she deferred thoughts of her wider disgrace; at present mother was enough. Mother was fearfully angry—Missy knew she would never understand. She said harsher things than she'd ever said before. Making such a spectacle of herself!—her own daughter, whom she'd tried to train to be a lady! This feature of the situation seemed to stir mother almost more violently than the flagrant disobedience.

"It's all that O'Neill girl," said Aunt Nettie. "Ever since she came here to live, Missy's been up to just one craziness after another."

Mother looked out the window and sighed. Missy was suddenly conscious that she loved her mother very much; despite the fact that mother had just said harsh things, that she was going to punish her, that she never understood. A longing welled up in her to fling her arms round mother's neck and assure her that she never MEANT to be a spectacle, that she had only—

But what was the use of trying to explain? Mother wouldn't understand and she couldn't explain it in words, anyway—not even to herself. So she stood first on one foot and then on the other, and felt perfectly inadequate and miserable.

At last, wanting frightfully to say something that would ameliorate her conduct somewhat in mother's eyes, she said:

"I guess it WAS an awful thing to do, mother. And I'm AWFULLY sorry. But it wouldn't have come out quite so bad—I could have managed Gypsy better, I think—if it hadn't been for that old wasp."

"Wasp?" questioned mother.

"Yes, there was a lot of mud-wasps got to flying around and one some way got inside of my—my breeches. And you know how scared to death I am of wasps. I KNOW I could have managed Gypsy, but when I felt that wasp crawling around—" She broke off; tried again. "Don't think I couldn't manage her—but when I felt that—"

"Well, if the wasp was all that was the matter," queried mother, "why didn't you go after it?"

Missy didn't reply.

"Why did you just stand there and let it keep stinging you?"

Missy opened her lips but quickly closed them again. She realized there was something inconsistent in her explanation. Mother had accused her of immodesty: riding astride and wearing those scandalous pepper-and-salts and showing her legs. If mother was right, if she WAS brazen, somehow it didn't tie up to claim confusion because her—

Oh, legs!

She didn't try to explain. With hanging head she went meekly to her room. Mother had ruled she must stay there, in disgrace, till father came home and a proper punishment was decided upon.

It was not a short or glad afternoon.

At supper father came up to see her. He was disapproving, of course, though she felt that his heart wasn't entirely unsympathetic. Even though he told her Mr. Picker had made him pay for the bucket of candy. Missy knew it must have gone hard with him to be put in the wrong by Mr. Picker.

"Oh, father, I'm sorry!—I really am!"

Father patted her hand. He was an angel.

"Did you bring it home?" brightening at a thought.

"Bring what home?" asked father.

"Why, the candy."

"Of course not."

"I don't see why, if you had to pay for it. The bottom part wasn't hurt at all."

Father laughed then, actually laughed. She was glad to see the serious look removed from his face; but she still begrudged all that candy.

Nor was that the end of the part played by the candy. That night, as she was kneeling in her nightgown by the window, gazing out at the white moonlight and trying to summon the lovely thoughts the night's magic used to bring, the door opened softly and mother came tiptoeing in.

"You ought to be in bed, dear," she said. No, Missy reflected, she could never, never be really cross with mother. She climbed into bed and, with a certain degree of comfort, watched mother smooth up the sheet and fold the counterpane carefully over the foot-rail.

"Mrs. O'Neill just phoned," mother said. "Tess is very sick. It seems she and Arthur got hold of that bucket of candy."

"Oh," said Missy.

That was all she said, all she felt capable of saying. The twisted thoughts, emotions and revulsions which surge in us as we watch the inexplicable workings of Fate are often difficult of expression. But, after mother had kissed her good night and gone, she lay pondering for a long time. Life is curiously unfair. That Tess and Arthur should have got the candy for which SHE suffered, that the very hours she'd been shut up with shame and disgrace THEY were gorging themselves, seemed her climactic crown of sorrow.

Yes, life was queer...

Almost not worth while to try to be athletic-she didn't really like being athletic, anyway... she hoped they'd had the ordinary human decency to give Gypsy just a little bit... Gypsy was a darling... that wavy tail and those bright soft eyes and the white star.. . but you don't have to be really athletic to ride a pony—you don't have to wear breeches and do things like that... Arthur wasn't so much, anyway—he had freckles and red hair and there was nothing romantic about him... Sir Galahad would never have been so scared of Mr. Picker—he wouldn't have shoved the blame off onto a maiden in distress... No, and she didn't think the King of Spain would, either... Or Rev. MacGill... There were lots of things just as good as being athletic... there were... lots of things...

A moonbeam crept up the white sheet, to kiss the eyelids closed in sleep.



CHAPTER VIII. A HAPPY DOWNFALL

Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?—A fitful tongue of fickle flame. And what is prominence to me, When a brown bird sings in the apple-tree? Ah, mortal downfalls lose their sting When World and Heart hear the call of Spring! You ask me why mere friendship so Outweighs all else that but comes to go?... A truce, a truce to questioning: "We two are friends," tells everything. I think it vile to pigeon-hole The pros and cons of a kindred soul. (From Melissa's Improvement on Certain Older Poets.)

The year Melissa was a high school Junior was fated to be an unforgettable epoch. In the space of a few short months, all mysteriously interwoven with their causes and effects, their trials turning to glory, their disappointments and surcease inexplicable, came revelations, swift and shifting, or what is really worth while in life. Oh, Life! And oh, when one is sixteen years old! That is an age, as many of us can remember, one begins really to know Life—a complex and absorbing epoch.

The first of these new vistas to unspread itself before Missy's eyes was nothing less dazzling than Travel. She had never been farther away from home than Macon City, the local metropolis, or Pleasanton, where Uncle Charlie and Aunt Isabel lived and which wasn't even as big as Cherryvale; and neither place was a two-hours' train ride away. The most picturesque scenery she knew was at Rocky Ford; it was far from the place where the melons grow, but water, a ford and rocks were there, and it had always shone in that prairie land and in Missy's eyes as a haunt of nymphs, water-babies, the Great Spirit, and Nature's poetics generally—the Great Spirit was naturally associated with its inevitable legendary Indian love story. But when Aunt Isabel carelessly suggested that Missy, next summer, go to Colorado with her, how the local metropolis dwindled; how little and simple, though pretty, of course, appeared Rocky Ford.

Colorado quivered before her in images supernal. Colorado! Enchantment in the very name! And mountains, and eternal snow upon the peaks, and spraying waterfalls, and bright-painted gardens of the gods—oh, ecstasy!