"It's because there's no one else around," he told himself, to explain the eagerness with which he rode over while he was teaching Kate to dance.

The boy was intelligent enough to recognize the fact that, however unschooled Kate might be in the things that counted in the outside world, she was not ignorant when it came to those within her ken. She knew the habits and peculiarities of wild animals and insects, every characteristic of sheep, and she was a nearly unfailing weather prophet through her interpretation of the meaning of wind and sky and clouds.

Her knowledge of botany was a constant surprise to him, for she seemed to know the name and use of the tiniest plant that grew upon the range.

But, after all, he demanded of himself, what did a girl want to know such things for? He would have liked better to see her in the shade with an embroidery hoop.

Restraining their trembling haste, yet fearing that they might miss something, the initiated townfolks managed to stay away from the Prouty House until the fashionably late hour of eight, but the simpler rural guests having eaten at six were ready and holding down the chairs in the office before "the music" had arrived. There was a flutter of puzzled inquiry among the Early Birds when Mrs. Abram Pantin, Mrs. Sudds and Mrs. Myron Neifkins with an air of conscious importance stationed themselves in a row at the door opening into the dining room, which was now being noisily cleared of tables and chairs.

Mrs. Pantin, as gossip had surmised, wore electric blue with collar and cuffs of lace that presumably was real, while angular Mrs. Sudds looked chaste, if somewhat like a windmill in repose, in her bridal gown. Mrs.

Neifkins, too, came up to expectations in her peach-blow satin.

For a while the ladies of the receiving line found their position somewhat of a sinecure, for n.o.body knew what they were standing there for until Mrs. Rufus Webb, the wife of Prouty's new haberdasher, arrived. Mrs. Webb had been called home to her dying mother's bedside, but fortunately had been able to return from her sad errand in time for the function at the Prouty House. When she laid aside her wrap it was observed that she had gone into red.

Kate was an unconscionable time in dressing, Hugh thought, as he waited in the office, considering that the flour sack tied behind her saddle had seemed to contain her wardrobe easily enough.

His attention was focused upon Mrs. Neifkins, whom he had last seen in a wrapper and slat sunbonnet, when a lull in the hubbub that became a hush caused him to look up. His eyes followed the gaze of every other pair of eyes to the head of the stairs that came down from the floor above into the office. He saw Kate--dreadful as to clothes as a caricature or a comic valentine! She had a wreath of red paper roses in her hair and a chain of them reached from one shoulder nearly to the hem of her skirt on the other side. The dress itself was made without regard to the prevailing mode and of the three-cent-a-yard bunting bought by sheepmen by the bolt to be used for flags to scare off coyotes in lambing time.

The body of the dress was blue, trimmed with the same material in red.

The sleeves were elbow length, and she wore black mitts. But the crowning horror, unless it was the wreath, was the string of red wild-rose seed pods around her neck.

Kate had cut out her gown without a pattern and with no mirror to guide her, the skirt was several inches shorter behind than in front, and a miscalculation put the gathers chiefly in one spot.

She was not recognized at first, for her visits to Prouty had been made at too long intervals for her to be known save by a few. Then, quickly--"Mormon Joe's Kate!" was whispered behind hands and pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth.

The girl's eager glowing face was the one redeeming thing of her appearance. Half way down the stairs she stopped involuntarily and looked with an expression of wondering inquiry into the many staring eyes focused upon herself. Then a t.i.tter, nearly inaudible at first, grew into a general snicker throughout the room.

They were laughing at her! There was no mistake about that. Kate shrank back as though she had been struck; while the radiance faded from her face, and it turned as white as the wall at her back.

What was the matter? What had she done? Wasn't she all right? she asked herself, while her heart gave a great throb of fear. She gripped the bannister while her panic-stricken eyes sought Hughie in the crowded office. Where was he? Did he mean to leave her alone? It seemed minutes that she stood there, though it was only one at most.

In spite of his worldly air and social ease, Disston was only a boy after all, with a boy's keen sensitiveness to ridicule, and this ordeal was something outside the experience of his nineteen years. The worst he had expected was that she would be frumpish, or old-fashioned, or commonplace like these other women standing about, but it had not occurred to him that she might be conspicuously grotesque.

There was a moment of uncertainty which seemed as long to the boy as it did to Kate, and then the chivalry of his good southern blood responded gallantly to the appeal in her eyes. His dark face was dyed with the blood that rushed to the roots of his hair, and his forehead was damp with the moisture of embarra.s.sment, but he rose from his seat and went to meet her with a welcoming smile.

"Oh, Hughie!" she gasped tremulously in grat.i.tude and relief as she ran rather than walked down the remaining stairs.

The grinning crowd parted to let them pa.s.s as, self-conscious and stiffly erect, they walked the length of the office towards the dining room. Figuratively speaking, Prouty stood on tip-toe to see what sort of reception they would meet from the receiving line. It was tacitly understood that lesser social lights would take their cue from them.

Of its kind, it was as thrilling a moment as Prouty had experienced.

Mrs. Myron Neifkins had recognized Kate immediately and pa.s.sed the word along to Mrs. Pantin who, although a comparative stranger, had been properly supplied with information as to the community's undesirables.

"Mormon Joe's Kate," the daughter of the notorious Jezebel of the Sand Coulee Roadhouse, naturally was included in the list.

Hugh, who had met these ladies previously and found them as amiable as any one could wish--particularly Mrs. Pantin, who had regarded him as somebody to cultivate because of his connection with the exclusive Toomeys of the Scissor Ranch--now had something of the sensation of a person who had stepped into the frigid atmosphere of a cold storage plant.

Mrs. Pantin's eyes had all the warm friendliness of two blue china k.n.o.bs and her thin lips were closed until her mouth looked merely a vivid scratch. Yet, somehow, the boy managed to say with his manner of deferential courtesy:

"Mrs. Pantin, do you know Miss Prentice?"

Ordinarily, a part of Mrs. Pantin's society manner was a vivacious chirp, but now she said coldly between her teeth:

"I haven't that pleasure." She gave Kate her extreme finger tips with such obvious reluctance that the action was an affront.

Disston glanced at Mrs. Sudds in the hope of finding friendliness. That lady had drawn herself up like an outraged tragedy queen. No one would have dreamed, seeing Mrs. Sudds at the moment with her air of royal hauteur, that in bygone days she had had her own troubles making twelve dollars a week as a stenographer.

His glance pa.s.sed on to Mrs. Neifkins, who was picking at a French knot in a spasm of nervousness lest Kate betray the fact that they had met.

Disston was aware that Mrs. Neifkins knew Kate and his lip curled at her cowardice. He raised his head haughtily; he would not subject his partner to further rebuffs.

"Come on, Katie," he said, curtly, and they pa.s.sed into the dining room.

The girl's cheeks were flaming as they sat down on the chairs ranged against the wall.

"Hughie," her fingers were like ice as she clasped them together in her lap. "What's the matter? Do I look--queer?"

He answered shortly:

"You're all right."

They sat watching the crowd file in. Suddenly Hughie exclaimed in obvious relief:

"There's Teeters, and Maggie Taylor and her mother! Wait here--I'll bring them over."

He went up to them with a.s.surance, for their friendliness and hospitality had been marked upon the several occasions that he had accompanied Teeters, who always had some transparent excuse for stopping at their ranch.

Mrs. Taylor, with her backwoods' conceit and large patronizing manner, had been especially amusing to Hughie, but now in this uncomfortable situation she looked like a haven in a storm as he saw her towering by nearly half a head above the tallest in the crowd.

It was Mrs. Taylor's proud boast that she came of a race of giants. Even upon ordinary occasions she bore a rather remarkable resemblance to a mountain sheep, but to-night the likeness was further increased by a grizzled bunch of frizzled hair that stood out on either temple like embryo horns. Mrs. Taylor looked, as it were, "in the velvet." She wore a brown sateen basque secured at the throat by a brooch consisting of a lock of hair under gla.s.s. It was observed, also, that for the evening she had removed the string which she commonly wore around her two large and widely separated front teeth, and which were being drawn together by this means at about the rate the earth is cooling off.

Mrs. Taylor dated events from the time "Mr. Taylor was taken," though there was always room for doubt as to whether Mr. Taylor was "taken" or quite deliberately went.

Miss Maggie was tall and sallow and was antic.i.p.ating matrimony with an ardor that had made the maiden one of the country's stock jokes, since the sharer of it seemed to be of secondary importance to the fact. All her spare change and waking hours were spent buying and embroidering linen for the "hope chest" that spoke of her determined confidence in the realization of her ambition.

The three greeted Hughie warmly. Miss Maggie flashed her dazzling teeth; Teeters reached out and smote him with his fist between the shoulder blades; Mrs. Taylor laid her hand upon his arm with her large smug air of patronizing friendliness, and, stooping, beamed into his face.

"We were not looking for you here. Did Mr. and Mrs. Toomey come? Are you alone?"

"I brought Katie Prentice--she's sitting over there."

"Oh!" Mrs. Taylor's expression changed.

The boy looked at her pleadingly as he added:

"She has so few pleasures, and she would so like to have acquaintances--to make friends."

"I dare say," dryly.

"She--she doesn't know any one. Won't you--all come and join us?" There was entreaty in the boy's voice.