When the old phaeton had rattled out of the yard she went back to the shadows and Joe.  She was past all argument, all analysis, all reason, now.  She hungered only for this:  Joe’s big clean young arms about her; Joe’s fresh lips, with their ignorant passion, against hers.  For years she had known Joe only by sight; a few months ago she had been merely amused and flattered by the boy’s crudely expressed preference; even now she knew that for a Monroe girl, at twenty-one, to waste a thought on a Hawkes boy of nineteen was utter madness.  But a week or two ago, walking home from church with her mother and herself on Sunday night, Joe had detained her for a moment under the dooryard trees—­had kissed her.  Sally was like a young tiger, tamed, petted, innocuous, whose puzzled lips have for the first time tasted blood.  Every fibre in her being cried for Joe, his bashful words were her wisdom, his nearness her very breath and being.

She clung to him now, in the dark kitchen porch, in a fever of pure desire.  Their hearts beat together.  Sally’s arms were bent against the boy’s big chest, as his embrace crushed her; they breathed like runners as they kissed each other.

A moment later they went back into the kitchen to scoop the hard-packed ice cream into variegated saucers and enjoy unashamedly such odd bits of it as clung to fingers or spoon.  The cakes had all been cut now, enormous wedges of every separate variety were arranged on the plates that were scattered up and down the long stretch of the table in the dining room.  The dancers and all the other guests filed out to enjoy the supper, the room rang with laughter and screamed witticisms.  A popular feature of the entertainment was the mottoes, flat scalloped candies of pink and white sugar, whose printed messages caused endless merriment among these uncritical young persons.  “Do You Love Me?”; “I Am A Flirt”; “Don’t Kiss Me”; “Oh, You Smarty,” said the mottoes insinuatingly, and the revellers read them aloud, exchanged them, secreted them, and even devoured them, in their excessive delight.

Presently they all toasted Grandma Kelly in lemonade.  The old lady, with Lydia and some of the older women, was enjoying her cake and cream in the parlour, but tears of pride and joy came to her eyes when the young voices all rose with lingering enjoyment on “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” and there was a general wiping of eyes at “She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” which followed it.  Then some of the girls rushed in to kiss her once more, and, as it was now nearly twelve o’clock, Lydia called her sisters, and they said their good-nights.