“Oh, oh, honey!  Look attem long-tail suit!  ’At’s a rich boy, honey!”

“Yessum, so!  Bet he got his pockets pack’ full o’ twenty-dolluh gol’ pieces right iss minute!”

“You right, honey!”

William allowed the coldness of his faint smile to increase to become scornful.  These poor sidewalk creatures little knew what seethed inside the alabaster of the young Augustan noble!  What was it to them that this was Miss Pratt’s last night and that he intended to dance and dance with her, on and on?

Almost sternly he left these squalid lives behind him and passed to the festal gateway.

Upon one of the posts of that gateway there rested the elbow of a contemplative man, middleaged or a little worse.  Of all persons having pleasure or business within the bright inclosure, he was, that evening, the least important; being merely the background parent who paid the bills.  However, even this unconsidered elder shared a thought in common with the Augustan now approaching:  Mr. Parcher had just been thinking that there was true romance in the scene before him.

But what Mr. Parcher contemplated as romance arose from the fact that these young people were dancing on a spot where their great-grandfathers had scalped Indians.  Music was made for them by descendants, it might well be, of Romulus, of Messalina, of Benvenuto Cellini, and, around behind the house, waiting to serve the dancers with light food and drink, lounged and gossiped grandchildren of the Congo, only a generation or so removed from dances for which a chance stranger furnished both the occasion and the refreshments.  Such, in brief, was Mr. Parcher’s peculiar view of what constituted the romantic element.

And upon another subject preoccupying both Mr. Parcher and William, their two views, though again founded upon one thought, had no real congeniality.  The preoccupying subject was the imminence of Miss Pratt’s departure;—­neither Mr. Parcher nor William forgot it for an instant.  No matter what else played upon the surface of their attention, each kept saying to himself, underneath:  “This is the last night—­the last night!  Miss Pratt is going away—­going away to-morrow!”

Mr. Parcher’s expression was peaceful.  It was more peaceful than it had been for a long time.  In fact, he wore the look of a man who had been through the mill but now contemplated a restful and health-restoring vacation.  For there are people in this world who have no respect for the memory of Ponce de Leon, and Mr. Parcher had come to be of their number.  The elimination of William from his evenings had lightened the burden; nevertheless, Mr. Parcher would have stated freely and openly to any responsible party that a yearning for the renewal of his youth had not been intensified by his daughter’s having as a visitor, all summer long, a howling belle of eighteen who talked baby-talk even at breakfast and spread her suitors