“You may not be thinking about it, but you’re capturing friends, right and left.  I’ve been watching you, and knew by the expression on the faces of those you were talking to that you were gathering them in and nailing them fast.  How does a woman like you do it?—­that’s what I’d like to know!”

“Go and do your duty like a man, Jimmy.  Flattering the members of your own family is not a part of it.”  Dismissing him with a smile which made him more than ever eager for her company, she turned away, to devote herself, as her husband was doing, to the least attractive of the guests.

The evening wore away at last, and at a reasonably early hour the hosts were free.  The last fellow citizen had barely delivered his parting speech and taken himself off when Red Pepper Burns turned a handspring in the middle of the deserted room, and came up grinning like a fiend.

“Good-bye—­good-bye—­’tis a word I love to speak,” he warbled, and seizing his wife kissed her ardently on either cheek.

“Hear—­hear!” applauded James Macauley, returning from the hall in time to see this expression of joy.  “May we all follow your excellent example?”

“You may not.”  Red Pepper frowned fiercely at Mr. Macauley, approaching with mischievous intent.  “Keep off!”

“She’s my sister-in-law,” defended Macauley, continuing to draw near, and smiling broadly.

“All the more reason for you to treat her with respect.”  Burns’s arm barred the way.

Macauley stopped short with an unbelieving chuckle.  Arthur Chester, Winifred, his wife, and Martha Macauley, coming in from the dining-room together, gazed with interest at the scene before them.  Ellen, herself smiling, looked at her husband rather as if she saw something in him she had never seen before.  For it was impossible not to perceive that he was not joking as he prevented Macauley from reaching his wife.

“Great snakes! he’s in earnest!” howled Macauley, stopping short.  “He won’t let me kiss his wife, when I’m the husband of her sister.  Go ’way, man, and cool that red head of yours.  Anybody’d think I was going to elope with her!”

“Think what you like,” Burns retorted, coolly, “so long as you keep your distance with your foolery.  You or any other man.”

“Red, you’re not serious!” This was Martha.  “Can’t you trust Ellen to preserve her own—­”

“Dead line?  Yes—­in my absence.  When I’m on the spot I prefer to play picket-duty myself.  I may be eccentric.  But that’s one of my notions, and I’ve an idea it’s one of hers, too.”

“Better get her a veil, you Turk.”

Macauley walked away with a very red face, at which Burns unexpectedly burst into a laugh, and his good humour came back with a rush.

“Look here, you people.  Forget my heroics and come over to our house.  I’ll give you something to take the taste of those idiotic little cakes out of your hungry mouths.  No refusals!  I’m your best friend, Jim Macauley, and you know it, so come along and don’t act like a small boy who’s had his candy taken away from him.  You’ve plenty of candy of your own, you know.”