“Why don’t we begin on the eats?” demanded Billy McGraw. “I am starving in the sight of plenty.”

“He is always that way,” said Tim Turner. “Ever since the time in the trenches there has been no satisfying Billy. Bet anything the trenches will be filled up and leveled over before Billy is filled up.”

“Well, I hope they will be leveled over before I am,” laughed Billy, good-naturedly. “It’s so Miss Wright, I can even eat beans and stew, two things at which most of the returned soldiers balk. Still no one answers me—why do we wait?”

“We are waiting for Danny,” blushed Mary Louise. “He had to leave for a few moments.”

“Tut, tut! Don’t begin by spoiling him.”

“But you couldn’t spoil Danny,” insisted his loyal little fiancée. “I don’t know what he went85 out for, but I am sure he had some unselfish reason.”

“You can’t spoil me either,” pleaded Billy.

“Any more than you can gild the lily or paint the rose. You are already in a state of decomposition,” put in Tim.

“Somebody take pity on me and feed me! Danny may be gone a year or so. He often goes away and doesn’t return. Even now he may be eating at a restaurant—”

“Here, here’s a sandwich!” said Elizabeth Wright. “Here are two sandwiches and a chicken leg.”

“Gee! You are a nice girl,” cried Billy. “About the nicest girl I know. You’ll be even nicer if you sit over here by me while I get on the outside of this ambrosia.”

He looked at Elizabeth Wright with a feeling of real interest. Up to that moment he had only regarded her as one of the Wright sisters with the managing mother of whom he lived in holy terror. Being an exceedingly well off young man, he was on Mrs. Wright’s list with triple stars as one of the most eligible possibilities in Dorfield. He had felt that the Wright girls were quite as eager for his attentions as their mother,86 but this Elizabeth seemed to be different from the rest somehow. She did not seem to care whether he paid her attention or not. To be sure, she fed him, but it was with the compassion she might have shown a hungry dog, and when he asked her to sit down by him on the window seat while he ate the purloined sandwiches and chicken leg, she declined, saying she must help Josie unpack and had no time to watch the animals feed.

“Cruel!” he murmured through a muffling tomato sandwich. He could not help smiling to think how Mrs. Wright would have been shocked at a daughter of hers refusing even such a simple invitation as watching a desirable parti eat.

Billy McGraw had been in a fair way to become spoiled with all the money he could spend. He was an only child, with a doting mother of his own and all the managing mammas in Dorfield reaching out after him for their daughters. But the war had come just in time to save him not only from the managing mammas but from himself and the inevitable spoiling that wealth and self-indulgence was sure to bring him. He had enlisted as a private at the first call of his country and the training he had received in the ranks87 was to prove of life-long benefit to him. His was a lovable nature and it was hardly his fault that he had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but it was much to his credit that when the test came he was able to dispense with that same silver spoon and could manage to stomach the army beans often without even the formality of a fork. Now that the war was over he had returned to Dorfield with more purpose in his life. He had realized it was up to him to work in spite of his wealth and, having some mechanical skill, he had applied to the Neal Automobile Factory for a job with the determination of learning the business from the beginning. The consequence was he was enjoying his short Saturday as much as any workman in Dorfield. Lunch with a bunch of interesting girls would fully repay him for the job of carpentering and plumbing that Danny Dexter had mapped out for him for the afternoon.

“Here they are!” he shouted, peering down from the window, and in a moment Danny and Bob arrived with Irene borne between them in their improvised basket.

“Oh, Danny! You darling!” cried Mary Louise, rushing forward and embracing Irene, who sat smiling like a queen on her throne.88 “Here, sit here, Irene, in the seat of honor at the head of the packing box.”

“Wasn’t it lovely of them to come for me?”

“No lovelier than for you to come with us,” said Bob Dulaney in an undertone.

Laura and Lucile had arrived exactly on time and immediately the feast began. There was so much hilarity that the cleaning and dyeing establishment below began to wonder what manner of industry was to be conducted above them and some of the roomers on the third floor crept down and peeped in the door to see what all the fun was about.

In the midst of the luncheon, Mrs. Markle came tripping up the steps.

“Oh, please excuse me, I had no idea of interrupting a party,” she said. “I merely wanted to see Mary Louise for a moment and went by her home and was sent here by her darling old colored butler.”

“Oh, but you are not interrupting, Hortense,” declared Mary Louise, drawing her new friend into the room and introducing her to Josie and some of the young men with whom she was not acquainted. She knew most of the persons seated around the packing boxes.

89 “You must sit down and have some lunch,” said Josie hospitably. She looked keenly at the new arrival and evidently what she saw pleased her, as she smiled engagingly, making room for Hortense at her own right hand.

Indeed it would have been a critical person who would not have conceded that Hortense Markle was a delightful picture on that pleasant Saturday in May. Her gown was, as usual, exquisite. It was mauve and of soft material that clung to her shapely form. Her hat, a small toque, was formed of orchids and her one ornament was a brooch of wonderful workmanship. It was an orchid of rare beauty made of gold and enamel with a large diamond shining like a dew drop from its centre.

She took her seat, remarking as she did so that, since she had run in on them, she felt sure she would make less disturbance by sitting down than by making all the male guests stand while she transacted her business with Mary Louise.

“She is a lady of dis............