forgot to call for his dance or pay a party-call–or anything. She accepted attentions as compliments, not as taxes. Consequently she collected fewer than she might have had. The boys respected her so much, too, that none of them insulted her with flirtatiousness. But how her hungry heart had longed to be insulted! How she had yearned to fight her way out from a strong man's audacious arms and to writhe away from his daring lips!

On that memorable night Josie had given a party and Deborah had gone. No fellow had taken her; but, then, Josie lived just across the street from the Larrabees, and Debby could run right over unnoticed and run home alone safely afterward. Debby was safe anywhere where it was not too dark to see her. Her face was her chaperon.

Asaph Shillaber took Birdaline to Josie's party that night, and he danced three times with Debby. Each time–as she knew and pretended not to know–he had come to her because of a mix-up in the program or because she was the only girl left without a partner. But a dance was a dance, and Asaph was awful light on his feet, for all he was so big.

After she had danced the third time with him he led her hastily to a chair against the stairway, deposited her like an umbrella, and left her. She did not mind his desertion, but sat panting with the breathlessness of the dance and with the joy of having been in Asaph's arms. Then she heard low voices on the stairway, voices back of her, just above her head. She knew them perfectly.

Asaph was quarreling with Birdaline. Birdaline was attacking Asaph because he had danced three times with Josie.

"But she's the hostess!" Asaph had retorted, and Birdaline snapped back:

"Then why don't she dance with some of the other fellas, then? Everybody's noticing how you honey-pie round her."

"Well, I danced with Deb Larrabee three times, too," Asaph pleaded. "Why don't you fuss about that?"

Deborah perked an anxious ear to hear how Birdaline would accept this rivalry, and Birdaline's answer fell into her ear like poison:

"Deb Larrabee! Humph! You can dance with that old thing till the cows come home, and I won't mind. But you can't take me to a party and dance three times with Josie Barlow. You can't, and that's all. So there!"

Asaph had a fierce way with women. He talked back to them as if they were men. And now he rounded on Birdaline: "I'll take who I please, and I'll dance with who I please after I get there, and if you don't like it you can lump it!"

Deborah did not linger to hear the result of the war that was sure to be waged. There was no strength for curiosity in her hurt soul. She wanted to crawl off into a cellar and cower in the rubbish like a sick cat. Birdaline's opinion of her was a ferocious condemnation for any woman-thing to hear. It was her epitaph. It damned her, past, present, and future. She sneaked home without telling anybody good-by.

She had the next dance booked with Phineas Duddy, but she felt that he would not remember her if he did not see her. And since on the next day nobody–not even Phineas–ever mentioned her flight, she knew that she had not been missed.

She cried and cried and cried. She told her mother that she had a bad cold, to excuse her eyes that would not stop streaming. She cried herself out, as mourners do; then gradually accepted life, as mourners do.

That was long ago, and now, after all these years–years that had proved the truth of Birdaline's estimate of her; years in which Birdaline had married Asaph out of Josie's arms, and Josie had married Phineas out of Birdaline's private graveyard, and both of them had borne children and endured their consequences–even now Deborah must hear again the same relentless verdict as before. Time had not improved her or brought her luck or lover, husband or child.

She had thought that she had grown used to herself and her charmless lot, but the wound began to bleed afresh. She had the same impulse to take flight–to play the cat in the cellar–again. But her escape was checked by a little excitement.

Close upon the heels of Birdaline's unconscious affront to Deborah, Birdaline herself received an unconscious affront.

Asaph, desiring to be hospitable and to pay beauty its due, came forward at the end of the song to where little Pamela stood, receiving Carthage's homage with all the gracious condescension of Peoria. And Asaph roared out in the easy hearing of both his own wife and of Pamela's mother:

"Well, Miss Pamela, you sang grand. I got no ear for music, but you suit me right down to the ground. And you're so dog-on pretty! I wouldn't care if you sang like all-get-out. You look like your mother did when she was your age. You might not think it to look at your ma now, but in her day she was one of the best lookers in this whole town; same color eyes as you–and hair–and, oh, a regular heart-breaker."

Asaph's memory of Birdaline's eyes and hair was wrong, as a man's usually is. His praise was a two-edged sword of tactlessness.

He slashed Birdaline by forgetting her color and by implying that she retained no traces of her beauty, and he gashed Josie because he implied a livelier memory of Birdaline's early graces than a husband has any right to cherish.

Asaph had counted on doing a very gracious thing. When he had finished his little oration he glanced at Birdaline for recompense and received a glare of anger; he turned away to Josie and received from her eyes a buffet of wrath. He felt that he had made a fool of himself again, and his ready temper was up at once. He crossed glares with his wife, and everybody in eye-shot instantly felt a duel begun. It was not going to be so dull an evening, after all. Even Debby lingered to see what the result of the Shillaber conflict would be. She was also checked by the evidences that refreshments were about to be served. Chicken-salad and ice-cream were not frequent enough in her life to be overlooked. Disparagement and derision were her every-day porridge. Ice-cream was a party. So she lingered.

The Shillabers' hired girl, in a clean apron and a complete armor of blushes, appeared at the dining-room door and beckoned. Josie summoned her more than willing children to pass the plates. She nodded to Asaph to come and roll the ice-cream freezer into place and scrape off the salty ice. Then she waylaid him in the kitchen, and their wrangle reached the speedily overcrowded dining-room in little tantalizing slices as the swinging door opened to admit or emit one of the children. But it always swung shut at once. It was like an exciting serial with most of the instalments omitted.

CHAPTER III

The guests made desperate efforts to pretend that they were unaware to pretend that they were unaware of the feud and at the same time to follow it. They were polite enough even to try to ignore the salt the wrathful Asaph had let slip into the ice-cream.

In the cheerful stampede for the dining-room Debby had crowded into a sofa alongside another re-visitor to the town, Newton Meldrum, whom she had known but slightly. He had gone with the older girls and had already left Carthage when Debby came out–as far as she ever came out before she went