The Hearts Kingdom | Page 8

rescue it to accept Clifton
Gray's nosegay of huge violets from his greenhouse, and I embraced
Jessie with the nosegay pressed to her pink cheeks.
"Oh, Charlotte, I could fox-trot with you a week and not hesitate,"
exclaimed Billy, still clinging to me.
"Let's begin to-night," I assented warmly. Billy is contagious and to
dance with him is a high art.
"Let's motor out to the Club in Hamp's car and mine, have a chicken
supper and dance until sun-up," suggested Billy.
"We can stop by and get Mark Morgan and Nell, and I believe Harriet
Henderson will come along, if everybody asks her--all the men, I
mean," Letitia added with enthusiasm to match Billy's. Harriet
Henderson is the latest emerged widow in Goodloets and consequently
is most interesting to the masculine world at present.
"Let's start now, so as to give the chicken plenty of time to get into the
frying pan and over the fire," said Hampton, who is always the practical
member to bring up the details of any situation.
"I'm just from the tennis courts and I'll have to stop to dress, I'm
afraid," said Letitia meekly, as if she felt sure of a storm of
remonstrance.
"People don't dress to dance these days, Letitia," said Billy, with the
greatest innocence of mien and expression, a manner he always uses in
speaking to Letitia's rather literal directness and in which he delights
greatly. "They undress. You are unclothed enough as to ankles and if
you roll the sleeves of your tennis shirt to your shoulders, take off your
collar and tuck in the flaps, it will be enough to satisfy our cravings for
fashionable and suitable attire. We really want fried chicken rather than
chicken--"

"That will do, Billy," Letitia answered him with gentle firmness.
"That was just what I remarked, Letitia dear. That will do, for we want
chicken dressed with cream gravy and don't care about any swathed in
chiffon. And furthermore--"
"Do hush, Billy; look who's coming," Jessie interrupted him, and there
before my eyes I saw my entire group of friends begin to preen
themselves into new beings. Letitia smoothed down her skirts a fraction
of an inch, rolled down her sleeves another fraction and pushed back
into her braids a brown lock that was rioting across her brow. Jessie
shook out her muslin ruffles, reefed a fold of net higher across her neck,
and pinned it in place with a jeweled pin, while Hampton's and Billy's
and Cliff's expressions and poses of countenance and bodies suddenly
fell into lines of decorum.
"Great Smokes! We all forgot it was prayer meeting to-night, and it'll
be no trotting the fox for ours," Billy groaned, while he rose to his feet
with a smile of angelic sweetness. "Hello, Parson! We were just
beginning to think about you," was his greeting to the Sacred Jaguar
who had come through the garden and around the house. I felt sure that
he had heard Billy's plaint of disappointment about the dance, for there
was a quick glint of the amethysts as he halted and stood on the walk
below us and smiled up at us.
"I welcomed Miss Powers for breakfast, and now I find I want to come
over and do it again for tea," he said, and as I was perfectly cool, sober
and in my right mind at the moment he spoke, I had to concede that his
voice was the most wonderful I had ever heard, and something in me
made me resent it as well as the curious veneer that had spread over my
friends at his entry upon the scene. There they stood and sat, six
perfectly rational, fairly moral, representative free and equal citizens,
cowed by the representative of something that they neither understood
nor cared about, and it made me furious. They all wanted to go to the
Club to dance, to do the natural, usual, perfectly harmless thing, and
they were being constrained. If they had wanted to go to the prayer
meeting as they wanted to dance, they would have been natural and
joyful and eager about it.

"I resent, even I resent people's being bored with the God they think
exists, and I think it is disrespectful to go into His presence like that," I
said to myself, and then I suddenly determined to begin my rescue
work for the religiously involved, and now I felt was the appointed
time. Also I felt the excitement that comes from turning and facing the
foe which has pursued.
"I'm glad you came over, Mr. Goodloe," I said with nice, cool
friendliness in my voice. "Billy was just planning a glorious fox-trot for
this evening and then suddenly remembered with dismay that you were
to have your--entertainment at the Club to-night.