“They mightn’t want to leave the hotel on account of drummers on the night train,” said Mary Bell, dubiously.  “And that’s the very time mama gets most scared.  She’s always afraid there are boes on the train.”

“Boes!” said Ellen, scornfully, “what could a bo do!”

“Well, I will go over and talk to Johnnie,” said Mary Bell, with sudden hope.  “I’m going to get all ready except my dress, in case Aunt Mat comes,” she confided eagerly, when she had kissed the drowsy mother, and they were on their way.

“Say, did you know that Jim Carr is going to-night with Carrie Parmalee?” said Ellen, significantly, as the girls crossed the clean, bare dooryard, under the blossoming locust trees.

Mary Bell’s heart grew cold,—­sank.  She had hoped, if she did go, that some chance might make her escort no other than Jim Carr.

“It’ll make me sick if she gets him,” said Ellen, frankly.  Although engaged herself, she felt an unabated interest in the love-affairs about her.

“Is he going to drive her over?” asked Mary Bell, clearing her throat.

“No, thank the Lord for that!” said Ellen, piously.  “No.  It’s all Mrs. Parmalee’s doing, anyway!  His horse is lame, and I guess she thought it was a good chance!  He’ll drive over there with Gus and mama and papa and Sadie and Mar’gret; and I guess he’ll get enough of ’em, too!”

Mary Bell breathed again.  He hadn’t asked Carrie, anyway.  And if she, Mary Bell, really went to the dance, and the pink frock looked well, and Jim Carr saw all the other boys crowding about her for dances—­

The rosy dream brought them to the steps of the American Palace Hotel, for Deaneville was only a village, and a brisk walker might have circled it in twenty minutes.  The hideous brown hotel, with its long porches, was the largest building in the place, except for hay barns, and fruit storehouses.  Three or four saloons, a “social hall,” the “general store,” and the smithy, formed the main street, and diverging from it scattered the wide shady lanes that led to old homesteads and orchards.

“Johnnie,” Walt Larabee’s little black-eyed manager and wife, and the most beloved of Deaneville matrons, was in the bare, odorous hallway.  She was clad in faded blue denim overalls, and a floating transparent kimono of some cheap stuff.  Her coal-black hair was rigidly puffed and pinned, and ornamented with two coquettish red roses, and her thin cheeks were rouged.

“Well, say—­don’t you girls think you’re the whole thing!” said the lady, blithely.  “Not for a minute!  Walt and me are going to this dance, too!”

She waved toward them one of the slippers she was cleaning.

“Walt said somethin’ about it yes’day,” continued Mrs. Larabee, with relish, “but I said no; no twelve-mile drive for me, with a young baby!  But some folks we know came down on the morning train—­you girls have heard me speak of Ed and Lizzie Purdy?”