“Well, I thought you two were never coming!” Ellen’s full rich voice floated out to them, as they came abreast of the Dix homestead nestled back among tall locust trees.

The girl herself daintily picked her way toward them among the weeds by the roadside.  She uttered a little cry of dismay as a stray branch caught in her muslin skirts.

“That’s the sign of a beau, Ellen,” laughed Fanny, with extravagant gayety.  “The bigger the stick the handsomer and richer the beau.”

“What made you so late?” inquired Ellen, as all three proceeded on their way, the two girls linked affectionately arm in arm; Jim Dodge striding in the middle of the road a little apart from his companions.

“Oh, I don’t know,” fibbed Fanny.  “I guess I was slow starting to dress.  The days are so long now I didn’t realize how late it was getting.”

Ellen glanced sympathizingly at her friend.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t want to come, Fanny,” she murmured, “Seeing the social is at Mrs. Solomon Black’s house.”

“Why shouldn’t I want to come?” demanded Fanny aggressively.

“Well, I didn’t know,” replied Ellen.

After a pause she said: 

“That Orr girl has really bought the Bolton house; I suppose you heard?  It’s all settled; and she’s going to begin fixing up the place right off.  Don’t you think it’s funny for a girl like her to want a house all to herself.  I should think she’d rather board, as long as she’s single.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Jim Dodge coolly.

“You folks’ll get money out of it; so shall we,” Ellen went on.  “Everybody’s so excited!  I went down for the mail this afternoon and seemed to me ’most everybody was out in the street talking it over.  My!  I’d hate to be her tonight.”

“Why?” asked Fanny shortly.

“Oh, I don’t know.  Everybody will be crowding around, asking questions and saying things....  Do you think she’s pretty, Jim?”

“Pretty?” echoed the young man.

He shot a keen glance at Ellen Dix from under half-closed lids.  The girl’s big, black eyes were fixed full upon him; she was leaning forward, a suggestion of timid defiance in the poise of her head.

“Well, that depends,” he said slowly.  “No, I don’t think she’s pretty.”

Ellen burst into a sudden trill of laughter.

“Well, I never!” she exclaimed.  “I supposed all the men—­”

“But I do think she’s beautiful,” he finished calmly.  “There’s a difference, you know.”

Ellen Dix tossed her head.

“Oh, is there?” she said airily.  “Well, I don’t even think she’s pretty; do you, Fan?—­with all that light hair, drawn back plain from her forehead, and those big, solemn eyes.  But I guess she thinks she’s pretty, all right.”

“She doesn’t think anything about herself,” said Jim doggedly.  “She isn’t that kind of a girl.”

Ellen Dix bit a vexed exclamation short.