“Aren’t you going to change?” Mary asked.

“No.  It is too much trouble.”  Becky was in front of the mirror.  Her pearls caught the light of the candles.  Her bronze hair was a shining wave across her forehead.  “It is too much trouble,” she said, again, and turned from the mirror.

She had a dozen frocks that had come in the rosy hamper—­frocks that would have made the boarders open their eyes.  Frocks that would have made Dalton open his.  But Becky had the feeling that this was not the moment for lovely clothes.  She felt that she would be cheapened if she decked herself for George.

When the two girls went down-stairs Truxton was waiting for his wife.  “I thought you would never come,” he said.  He drew her within the circle of his arm, and they went out into the garden.  The Judge and Mrs. Beaufort were on the porch.  Becky sat on the step and leaned her head against Aunt Claudia’s knee.

“What in the world made you ask all those people over, Becky?” the Judge demanded.

“Oh, they’re great fun, Grandfather, and I felt like it.”

“Have you planned anything for them to eat, Claudia?”

“Watermelons.  Calvin has put a lot of them in the spring.”

The stars were thick overhead.  Becky looked up at them and relaxed a little.  Since Dalton had spoken to her over the wire she had gone through the motions of doing normal things.  She had eaten and talked, and now she was sitting quite still on the step while Aunt Claudia smoothed her hair, and the Judge talked of things to eat.

But shut up within her was a clock which ticked and never stopped. "He will come—­when he thinks—­you are mine——­ He will come—­when he thinks—­you are mine——­“

Randy and his mother arrived in Little Sister, with two of the boarders for good measure in the back seat.  They had dropped Major Prime at Flippins’, where he was to make a call on Madge MacVeigh.  He had promised to come later, however, if Randy would drive over and get him.

The rest of the boarders were packed variously into their cars and the surrey, and as soon as they arrived they proceeded to occupy the lawn and the porch, and to overflow the garden.  They made a great deal of pleasant noise about it, and the white gowns of the women, and the white flannels of the men gave an impressionistic effect of faint blue against the deeper blue of the night.

Within the house, the rugs were up in the drawing-room, the library, the dining-room, and the wide hall; there sounded, presently, the tinkling music of the phonograph, and there was the unceasing movement of white-clad figures which seemed to float in a golden haze.

Becky danced a great deal, with Randy, with the younger boarders, and with the genial gentleman.  She laughed with an air of unaffected gayety.  And she felt that her heart stopped beating, when at last she looked up and saw Dalton standing in the door.