Chapter V

"Is Laly's illness a matter of doctors and drugs, or is it a becoming little paleness in a pink tea-gown?" wrote Hazel to Marion, after the arrival of Eulalie's ambassador, with her royal message. "If it is at all serious, Elvira will go home at once. If it isn't, I would like to keep her a while. She has refused the man of the mills, but I think he is trembling on the brink of another proposal, from which I hope a different result."

Marion wrote back:

"Tell Elvira to stay as long as she likes. Laly's pallor came
out of her powder box. She eats rations enough for two."

When Hugh returned Eulalie made bitter moan about her hapless lot.

"I've been so hunted and harassed by autumn dudes that I didn't want, and their bleating autos, I haven't had the peace of a cat. And you stayed away so, and Elvira has utterly abandoned me. She never came home."

"Your sister Hazel wouldn't let her," said Hugh, looking inquisitively at Eulalie's healthful bloom.

"Oh, I got along. And I suppose those roses went to her head, poor old dear; it's such a new thing for her to have them given her. Didn't she chant paeans over them?"

"You couldn't notice any paeans," said Hugh, "but several fellows were trying to chant proposals to her besides uncle E. Ginger! but you ought to see Elvira now, Miss Eulalie; she's all dimply and pink, and her hair isn't slick, like it used to be, though it isn't messy, either; it's kind of crimpled up high, some way, like you'd raveled out a brown silk dress and piled up the ravelings. She wears new kind of things, too--dresses with jig-saw things--you know what I mean, frilly tricks that make you think of peach blossoms, or pie plant when it's cooked and all pink-white and clear. Why, it's true as preaching. I never knew her until I met her there at Lindale."

"So my prim, old-maid sister has turned butterfly since she went gadding?"

"No, she isn't a butterfly; she's too well supplied with brains for that; she couldn't keep that bunch of old worldlings hypnotized as she does if she hadn't a pile of original ideas of her own, though the dimples and frillicues may have caught them in the first place."

"Huh!" commented Eulalie, shortly. "I wonder how you happened to get so well acquainted with her, just passing through Lindale."

"I couldn't have," Hugh owned; "takes time to learn to appreciate a girl like that. If it hadn't been for your message, I suppose I never should have gone beyond the preface of her character; but when I saw the whirlwind she had stirred up among the dry leaves of the elderly boys' hearts, I concluded to postpone the tramping trip and watch the fun a while. Honestly, she was a new experience to me."

"I'm surprised to hear of her frivolity." A slight, shrewish flavor crept into Eulalie's smooth voice. "The way she used to persecute me for having a few beaux----"

"Oh, she doesn't want them, nor encourage them," Hugh quickly explained. "She just stays still, like a lamp, you know, that shines out soft and clear because it can't help it, and they go bumping along and sizzle their wings. It isn't her doings. They're mostly all too old for her--why, do you know, Miss Eulalie, I had supposed she was older than I, and I discovered she was two years younger?"

"I hope that won't prevent her being a good aunt to you," mused Eulalie, with restrained spite.

Hugh laughed, cheerily.

"She won't be any kind of an aunt to me--to uncle E.'s disgust. I did think he deserved a free field, because he discovered her in the chrysalis--when he came here with me; and he got it, so far as I was concerned. But he admitted to me that he thought it folly to keep on butting your head against a perfectly immovable wall, alluring as the wall might be; that he should go back to his mills and his former resolution and keep off the battlefield of love forever after. So then I concluded to give up my tramp entirely for this year and see if I could make a go with Cupid--and--a--Elvira is having a wedding dress made, and is going to accept me as a wedding present."

THE NEIGHBOR'S DOG

By UNA HUDSON

Half an hour after the new tenant had taken possession of the house next door, Miss Clementina Liddell looked out of her parlor window and saw a small, brown dog making himself very much at home on her front lawn.

Now, though the dog himself was small, his feet were not, and he was industriously digging a hole in the middle of Miss Clementina's bed of scarlet geraniums.

Miss Clementina was indignant. But for her unwillingness to speak to a gentleman to whom she had not been properly introduced, she would have promptly crossed the strip of grass between the two houses and demanded that the intruder be forced to return to his own lawn.

As it was, she went out and attempted to "shoo" him off. But the little brown dog would not shoo. He stopped digging, and, with much waving of his stubby tail and a friendly bark or two, launched himself at Miss Clementina.

She stepped hastily backward, but not before the front of her neat, pink morning gown had been hopelessly soiled by the dog's muddy feet.

"You bad, bad dog," she scolded, energetically, emphasizing her words by a lifted forefinger.

The little dog barked cheerfully and circled twice around her. He was so frankly, so joyously irrepressible, that Miss Clementina did not know whether to feel amused or vexed.

"Oh, well," she compromised, "I dare say you _mean_ well. And we can fill up the hole you've dug, but I do hope you won't do it again."

She looked him over critically.

"You're thin," she decided, mentally; "shockingly thin. I'm afraid your master doesn't feed you enough. He probably has an absurd notion that a dog shouldn't be fed but once a day. I've heard of such things, and I think it's positively inhuman."

Miss Clementina glanced furtively toward the house next door. No one was in sight. She bent over the wriggling brown dog.

"You poor thing," she whispered, "come around to the kitchen. For once in your life you shall have all you can eat."

It was a rash promise, and the keeping of it involved the chops for luncheon and all the milk in the house.

"He's rather a nice dog, don't you think?" Miss Clementina said to the maid, as she watched him eat. "But he has a dreadful appetite. I think we'd best tell the butcher's boy to bring some dog's meat; chops are so expensive."