Miss Pratt was entranced.  “Oh, ’plendid!” she cried, watching him with fascinated eyes.  “Now take dray, big, ’normous puffs!  Take dray, big, ’normous puffs!”

George took great, big, enormous puffs.

She declared that she loved to watch men smoke, and William’s heart, as he sat on the distant fence, was wrung and wrung again by the vision of her playful ecstasies.  But when he saw her holding what was left of the first Little Sweetheart for George to light a second at its expiring spark, he could not bear it.  He dropped from the fence and moped away to be out of sight once more.  This was his darkest hour.

Studiously avoiding the vicinity of the smokehouse, he sought the little orchard where he had beheld her sitting with George; and there he sat himself in sorrowful reverie upon the selfsame fallen tree.  How long he remained there is uncertain, but he was roused by the sound of music which came from the lawn before the farmhouse.  Bitterly he smiled, remembering that Wallace Banks had engaged Italians with harp, violin, and flute, promising great things for dancing on a fresh-clipped lawn—­a turf floor being no impediment to seventeen’s dancing.  Music!  To see her whirling and smiling sunnily in the fat grasp of that dancing bear!  He would stay in this lonely orchard; she would not miss him.

But though he hated the throbbing music and the sound of the laughing voices that came to him, he could not keep away—­and when he reached the lawn where the dancers were, he found Miss Pratt moving rhythmically in the thin grasp of Wallace Banks.  Johnnie Watson approached, and spoke in a low tone, tinged with spiteful triumph.

“Well, anyway, ole fat George didn’t get the first dance with her!  She’s the guest of honor, and Wallace had a right to it because he did all the work.  He came up to ’em and ole fat George couldn’t say a thing.  Wallace just took her right away from him.  George didn’t say anything at all, but I s’pose after this dance he’ll be rushin’ around again and nobody else ’ll have a chance to get near her the rest of the afternoon.  My mother told me I ought to invite him over here, out I had no business to do it; he don’t know the first principles of how to act in a town he don’t live in!”

“Where’d he go?” William asked, listlessly, for Mr. Crooper was nowhere in sight.

“I don’t know—­he just walked off without sayin’ anything.  But he’ll be back, time this dance is over, never you fear, and he’ll grab her again and—­What’s the matter with Joe?”

Joseph Bullitt had made his appearance at a corner of the house, some distance from where they stood.  His face was alert under the impulse of strong excitement, and he beckoned fiercely.  “Come here!” And, when they had obeyed, “He’s around back of the house by a kind of shed,” said Joe.  “I think something’s wrong.  Come on, I’ll show him to you.”

But behind the house, whither they followed him in vague, strange hope, he checked them.  “Look there!” he said.