Speed Nell
Back at School with the Tucker Twins

CHAPTER XII
THE BALL

I can't fancy that the time will ever come when I shall be too jaded to be thrilled at the mere mention of a ball. On that Thanksgiving evening it seems to me I had every thrill that can come to a girl. I had been to but few dances – the one at the Country Club the winter before and the hop at Willoughby were the only real ones, and this grown-up ball with the lights and music and the handsomely gowned women and dapper men made me right dizzy with excitement. The twins took a ball as rather a matter of course, having been dancing around with their young father ever since they could toddle, but Annie's eyes were sparkling with joy and Mary Flannagan, who was very bunchy in "starch paper blue" taffeta, the very stiff kind with many gathers around her waist, was jumping up and down, keeping time to the music.

Mary, with all her bunchiness, was an excellent dancer and as light on her feet as a gas balloon, (if a gas balloon could have feet). Sometimes her voluminous skirts had quite the appearance of a balloon and seemed to buoy her up. Mary was so frank and honest and gay that every one had to like her, and, strange to say, boys, who as a rule are quite snobbish about appearances and insist on a certain amount of beauty or style in the girls they go with, all liked Mary and she never lacked for a partner at a dance. She was so amusing and witty that they lost sight of her freckled face and scrambled red hair. Mary had good hard common sense, too, and such a level head that we were very apt to ask her advice on every subject in spite of the fact that she was many months younger than any of us.

A cross-eyed cow would have had a good time at that Thanksgiving ball. There were so many stags and all of them seemed so eager to dance that the girls were really overworked. Wink and Harvie introduced many University of Virginia men to us and we had the honour of dancing with every member of the football team who was able to hobble. George Massie, poor Sleepy, who had been so wide awake on the gridiron and so unconscious of himself, in the ball room was overcome with shyness. He was a very good dancer if he did break through a crowd with somewhat the manner of a centre rush. He danced with Annie Pore wherever he could get to her and when some eager swain tried to break in he would seize her in his mighty grasp and bear her away with about the same ease he would a football. If opponents went down under and before him, why then next time they would know better than get in his way.

Annie looked very lovely. The faithful white crêpe de chine had been cleaned and was still doing its duty. I heard many persons ask who she was and especially eager did the public seem to establish her identity when the great and only Hiram G. Parker singled her out for his attentions.

"Does she belong in Richmond?"

"She is sure to be a next year's belle with this start she is getting with Hiram G."

"I can't see what he sees in her. She has no style to speak of and that dress is plainly last year's model," this from a lady whose daughter was what put in my mind the remark I just made about cross-eyed cows. You felt she was led out to dance only because of the superfluity of males. "Now that Miss Binks from Newport News," continued the mystified lady, "that girl has some style and you can see why Hiram G. took a fancy to her. Of course those Binkses are common as pig tracks but the mother is well connected and they do say that old Binks has made money hand over fist. Mrs. Garnett met her at Willoughby and asked her up to visit her. You may be sure she is rich because we know she has no claim to being an aristocrat. Park Garnett demands either blood or money."

All of this I overheard between dances. I was standing on the edge of the crowd with Wink White with whom I had been laboriously dancing. I never could dance with Wink; we never seemed to be able to get in step. I knew it was his fault and he thought it was mine. He would persist, however, in asking me to dance. The conversation of the chaperones was rather embarrassing to both of us as Mabel was Wink's cousin, his family being the good connection that Mrs. Binks could boast of, and Mrs. Garnett was my cousin. We were forced, though, to hear more as we were wedged in near them for a few moments.

"They do say that Jeffry Tucker is paying Miss Binks a lot of attention. I saw her in his car at the game to-day and my daughter tells me that the girl is begigged about him. She actually broke a partial engagement with Hiram G. Parker to go somewhere with Mr. Tucker last week."

"Well, well! She looks fit to cope with those Heavenly Twins!"

"Oh! They aren't so bad now. They do say they are toned down a lot. School has been good for them."

"They never were to say bad – just wild and harum-scarum. I'd hate to think Jeffry Tucker would give his girls such a young stepmother. They need some middle-aged person."

"Yes, but poor Jeffry! Can't you see him tied to some middle-aged person? He is too young a man to marry for his children's sake."

"Well, he's too old a man to marry a girl right out of school and expect his daughters to respect her."

I was certainly glad to start dancing again even with the four-footed Wink. It is a strange thing what makes a good dancer. Some of the most awkward-looking persons dance beautifully and, vice versa, some very graceful ones are as stiff as pokers on the ballroom floor. Now Wink was a very well set up young man, tall, broad shouldered, with an erect carriage, almost soldierly in his bearing. It is all right to walk like a soldier but to dance the way a soldier walks is not so exemplary. Wink always had a kind of "Present arms! March!" manner and a girl does not like to be held and carried around like a musket.

Dee declared she thought Wink was a good dancer and she could make out finely with him, and thank goodness, Wink had found this out and broke in on Dee more than he did on me. I liked to talk to him; he was a very bright, agreeable young man with original ideas and lots of ambition. If only his ambition had not directed his attentions to me! I could not get over a certain embarrassment with him occasioned by the ridiculous proposal he had made me while we were at Willoughby. He had said to me then that he did not know how much he loved me until he saw me with my hair done up like a grown-up, and I had joked and told him that I could not judge of my feelings for him until he grew a moustache. He had immediately left off shaving his upper lip and now, to my confusion, every time I looked at him there bristled a very formidable moustache.

Wink was very good looking, with nice blue eyes and a straight nose. I don't know why it seemed such a huge jest for him to be trying to make love to me. Lots of girls my age had devoted lovers, at least according to their accounts they did. I was almost seventeen and it would be rather fun, I thought, to encourage him and even have a ring to put very conspicuously on my left hand on the engagement finger, but when I thought of his "lollapalussing" ways that night on the piazza at Willoughby I just knew I could not stand it.

"Lollapalussing" was a Tweedles word and meant sentimental spooning and a hand-holding tendency. We used that word at Gresham to describe the girls who have a leaning, clinging-vine way of flopping on you. Our quintette was very much opposed to lollapalussers, male or female. I fancy when you are very much in love that lollapalussing is not so bad, but then I wasn't at all in love, certainly not with Wink.

Father had taken a great fancy to Wink and the attraction seemed mutual. They talked together a great deal, and even at the ball when the young man was not dancing with either Dee or me, he would seek out Father, who was looking on at the dancing with great interest, and the two evidently found much to converse about.

"Page," said Father, coming up to me as I was standing for a moment with Mr. Tucker, after a most glorious dance in which not once had we missed step or bumped into any one, "I have asked Mr. White down to Bracken for a visit during the Christmas holidays. I want him to see the country," putting his hand affectionately on Wink's shoulder. "He is thinking of settling in the country after he gets his M.D., and has some hospital practice, and I am looking out for some one to throw my mantle on, as it were."

"Oh – ye – that would be fine," I stammered, and I hate myself yet for blushing like a fool rose. Zebedee saw it and he looked so sad, just exactly as he had the winter before when Mr. Reginald Kent asked Dum for a lock of her hair. I did wish I could make him understand that it made not a whip stitch of difference to me where Wink White settled. That I was nothing but a little girl and did not care a bit for beaux, except, of course, for dancing partners, and maybe a candy beau or two. Every girl wants that kind. But as for serious, young, would-be doctors growing moustaches and coming to settle in our end of the county – it made me tired. I did not know how to let my kind friend know it did, though, and as just then the chrysanthemum-headed giant from Carolina, the one I had seen weeping on the field after the game, came up to claim a dance, I had to leave. A moment afterwards I had the doubtful pleasure of seeing Zebedee engaged in the gyrations of some new fangled dance with the beaming Mabel Binks in his arms.

Mabel was certainly looking handsome. "I'll give it to her," as Mammy Susan says when she admits something pleasant about any one for whom she has no regard. She was dressed in a flame-coloured chiffon that set off her fiery beauty which was accentuated by the many diamonds, rather too many for a young girl, but I think it is usually the tendency of those who have no diamonds to wear to think that the ones who do have them wear too many. Needless to say that I have no diamonds to wear.

"Isn't she the limit?" hissed Dum, as we stopped dancing near each other and Zebedee and his partner kept on for a moment after the music had stopped. "I call it lollapalussy to dance after the band quits."

"She is looking mighty handsome, don't you think?"

"Handsome! She looks oochy koochy to me! Too like the Midway to suit my taste."

Well, we had certainly had a wonderful time and I was not going to let anything ruin it for me. Stephen White could grow a moustache as big as a hedge and come and settle all over the county if he wanted to, and Mr. Jeffry Tucker could dance with a loud-mouthed girl in flame-coloured chiffon until he scorched himself if he wanted to. I had been to a ball and been something of a belle and now I was tired and sleepy and wanted to get to bed and talk over things with the girls, – I did wish though that I had not blushed like a fool rose just at the wrong time and that Zebedee had not seen me.

CHAPTER XIII
NODS AND BECKS

 
"'Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful jollity,
Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,
Nods and Becks, and Wreathèd Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek.'"
 

quoted Mary Flannagan. "There is a name for our magazine, right there in sober-sided old Milton."

"Why, that's as hackneyed as can be," objected Dum. "It seems to me that every school magazine I ever read was called 'Quips and Cranks.' Let's get something real original and different and try to make the mag the same way."

"Of course I didn't mean 'Quips and Cranks.' I mean 'Nods and Becks.' I think that would be a bully name."

And so did all of us, and "Nods and Becks" was unanimously elected as the name for the school paper that we were striving to get out before Christmas.

I was chosen editor-in-chief, much to my astonishment. It seemed to me that one of the Tuckers should have had that job, with their father a real live editor. They must have inherited some of his ability; but the Lit. Society would have me and I had to turn in and do the best I could. I didn't mind the writing end of it so much as the part I had in turning down some of the effusions that were handed in by members of the society. Our object in the publishing of this magazine was to make it as light and gay as possible.

We had chosen Christmas as our season for publication and that meant getting very busy after our Thanksgiving jaunt. We really had intended to use the little holiday we were to have at that time to get our magazine in shape. We called it a magazine for dignity, but it was really more of a newspaper.

I am going to publish the whole thing just to show what girls can do at school. Every one thought it was very creditable. We had lots of ads from the tradespeople at Gresham and a few from Richmond firms, enough to pay for the printing.

CHRISTMAS NUMBER OF

NODS AND BECKS

GRESHAM, VA

Sonnet to Santa Claus

BY PAGE ALLISON

 
Pan may be dead, but Santa Claus remains,
And once a year he riseth in his might.
Oft have I heard, in silences of night,
Tinkling of bells and clink of reindeer chains
As o'er the roof he sped through his domains,
When youthful eyes had given up the fight
To glimpse for once the rotund, jolly wight,
Who in a trusting world unchallenged reigns.
Last and the greatest of all Gods is he,
Who suffereth little children and is kind;
And when I've rounded out my earthly span
And face at last the Ancient Mystery,
I hope somewhere in Heaven I shall find
Rest on the bosom of that good old man.
 

BEAUTY HINTS AND ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

By Mary Flannagan

Dear Editor:

I have cut two sleeves for the wrong arm in trying to make my new velour coat out of half a yard less goods than the pattern called for. I can't match the goods now. What must I do?

(signed) Agitated Kate.

Dear Kate:

Put one sleeve in hind part before and then get a Teddy Bear or a plush monkey matching your coat as near as possible or in pleasing contrast to it if you can't get it to match, and tack it under your arm. It will hide the discrepancy and at the same time give a chic, stylish punch to your costume. It would be better to sew it as you would find it something of a strain on bargain days to have to hold it and you might forget.

(signed) Editor of Beauty Hints.

Dear Editor:

I am losing my good figure. What can I do to keep it?

(signed) Sylvia.

Dear Sylvia:

Pin it on tighter. Try black safety pins, they seem to be stronger than white.

(signed) Editor of Beauty Hints.

FACTS ABOUT FATIMA

It is the style to be tall and slender. Assume a virtue if you have it not and you who are short and fat, don't grow any shorter and fatter.

The following obesity rules will prove very helpful to my correspondent who signs herself, Miss Rosy Round:

Stand up for twenty minutes after meals (if you must have meals).

Eat no potatoes.

Eat no bread.

Avoid all starchy food.

Avoid meats of all kinds.

Fish is fattening.

Never touch sweets or pastry.

Eat no fruit for fear of uric acid.

Never drink water with your meals, but between meals do nothing but drink water, all the time that you can spare from the gymnastics that must be kept up to keep down the disfiguring fat.

Always leave the table hungry, but take a pickle with you, a large dill pickle is the best for your purpose. Eat a great deal of pickle; it may ruin your complexion but a good complexion is only skin deep while fatness goes straight through.

Sleep in your stays if you can, but if you can't just don't sleep. Sleep is a fattening habit at best. Keep a pickle under your pillow and take a bite when you think of it.

Lose your temper on all occasions, as nothing is more conducive to stoutness than placidity.

Stop speaking of yourself as a Fatty, and begin to speak of yourself as slender. Remember the power of Mind over Matter. Lead a lean life and think thin thoughts; dress in diaphanous gauze; make hair-splitting distinctions; talk and think much of your slender purse; walk the narrow way and have ever in your mind the eye of the needle through which you shall finally have to pass. – Before you know it you will lose pounds and pounds of flesh.

RECIPES TRIED IN MY OWN KITCHEN (NIT)

By Caroline Tucker

A Gresham Club Sandwich

Take two tender new pupils (Freshmen preferred, Juniors out of the question), stick them together in a corner, with a thin slice of reserve between them, season to taste with some spicy gossip and a little lollapalusser. After a year in a cool place they will be fit to eat.

* * * * *

Brown Betty à la Faculty

Take two crusty members of the faculty and let them grate against each other until both are reduced to crumbs. Place in baking dish a layer of crumbs and a layer of tart apples of discord well chopped. Sweeten well with high-toned politeness, veiled with sarcasm. Serve piping hot with the same kind of sauce you give to the gander.

* * * * *

French Dressing as Served at Gresham

Let the ingredients stay in bed until ten minutes before breakfast, then in a wild scramble cover with a thin layer of clothes without the formality of bathing or even taking off nightgown when breakfasting en famille. Do hair with a lick and a promise and beat all the other girls to the table.

* * * * *

FASHION NOTES

By Virginia Tucker

The newest fad among the women who know and know they know, is to have their perfume harmonize with their costumes. An up-to-date society woman would no more wear a blue dress and smell of lavender sachet than she would wear a lavender hat with said blue dress. Vera Violet must go with a purple dress; Attar of Roses with a pink; New Mown Hay with green, – and so on.

One very smart grande dame at a fine function, given lately at Gresham, gowned in a biscuit-coloured broadcloth, had a faint, delicious odour of hot rolls.

* * * * *

Hats are still worn hind part before and veils are put on to stay with no visible opening. One wonders sometimes "how the apple got in the dumpling."

Some of the newest veils have a sliding dot, to be worn over or near the mouth. This can be opened by one knowing the combination and then a small aperture is discovered that will admit of a straw. The soft drink drugstore man need not despair.

* * * * *

It is not considered good taste to wear more than three shades of false hair at one time, and a similarity in the texture of the material used should be aimed at. The puffs must be of one shade and material although it would be too much to expect of a woman to have them match absolutely with the switch, rat, pompadour and bun.

Rats are no longer in vogue but traps are now considered the sanitary and proper things. This steel construction lowers the fire rates, which is much in its favour. If we keep on with this false hair craze what will we come to? Perhaps to the fate of:

 
"This old man with a very long beard,
Who said: ''Tis just as I feared,
A lark and a wren,
Two owls and a hen
Have builded a nest in my beard.'"
 

If you have not hair enough of your own to cover the springs, there are plenty of kinds, colours and materials resembling human hair to be bought for a song. Goat hair is used a great deal as it is very durable and strong, – too strong in one sense, as: —

 
"You may break, you may shatter
The vase as you will,
But the scent of the roses
Will cling 'round it still."
 

* * * * *

JOKES AND NEAR JOKES

Nancy Blair, Editor

The son of an eminent preacher was greatly interested in the story of Adam and Eve. One night the child seemed very restless, tossing and turning in his crib. The father leaned over him, asking: "My child, what is the matter? Why don't you go to sleep?"

"Oh, Father, I can't! I've got such a pain in my ribs. I'm awful 'fraid God is sending me a wife."

* * * * *

Little Anne, aged five, was asked what she was fasting on during Lent. She answered, "Washing my hands."

* * * * *

A little girl who had never been to a wedding was greatly excited when one was going on across the street. She was especially interested in the little flower girls as they tripped out of the carriage in their dainty white frocks.

"Mother!" she exclaimed. "If Daddy dies, will you marry again?"

"No, my dear! Never! Why do you ask?"

"'Cause, Mother, I do so hope you will and let me be your little flower girl."

* * * * *

Customer – That was the driest, flattest sandwich I ever tried to chew into!

Waiter – Why, here is your sandwich! You ate your check.

* * * * *

One of the Sophomores wants to take Psychology because she says she understands that a course in it teaches you to do your hair up in a lovely Psyche knot – A Psychic Phenomenon!

* * * * *

Jean Rice has burst into poetry, viz.:

 
"Come to my arms,
You bundle of charms!
With the greatest enthusiasm
I will clasp you to my bosiasm."
 

Lines written to Miss Polly Kent:

 
There was a young lady named Kent,
Who declared she had not a cent,
She remembered a quarter
She had hid in her garter,
But on looking found that, too, had went.
 

* * * * *

A touching poem addressed to Miss Grace Greer, of Chicago, Ill.

Miss Greer is the champion gum-chewer of Gresham.

 
There was a young maid from the West,
Who chewed gum with such marvelous zest,
That they named a committee,
Both tactful and witty
Who suggested she let her jaws rest.
 

* * * * *

THE CORRESPONDENCE CURE

By Page Allison

CHAPTER I

"That's just what I'll do for you, Hal. I'll write to this Uncle Sam person and get him to give you one of his letter treatments," said Mr. Allen, Hal's daddy.

Jo Allen was so young that his incorrigible young son called him by his first name and regarded him as "one of the fellers" instead of a father; consequently he thought his own judgment as reliable as his Dad's and paid as much heed to his orders and requests as he would to one of the "fellers."

"Thunder! I ain't sick. What I gotter have a treatment for?"

"I didn't mean anything like paregoric, or milk and eggs and a teaspoonful of this in half a glass of water after meals. It seems to be something like this: an old man, calling himself 'Uncle Sam,' advertises in the Times that he will write fatherly letters to difficult boys for $50.00 a course."

"Aw, Jo! I swear, I bet it's a lot of stuff about 'do unto others.'" Hal always objected to other people's suggestions.

"Well, we'll take a chance on it. You don't like my methods, if you can call 'em that. You are my first and only offspring and I don't seem to have much maternal instinct and no judgment where you are concerned. Son, it is as hard for you not to have your mother as it is for me not to have my wife."

"It's all right, Jo, you know more 'bout being a father than I do 'bout being a son. But bring on your Uncle Sam and we can see what will happen. I don't have to read the letters if he writes a lot of rot."

"Nine o'clock! I ought to be at the office and and you ought to be at school. Don't play hookey again to-day," Jo Allen said as he reached for his hat.

Jo was a corporation lawyer and when he told the other members of his firm about his latest plans for bringing up his son, they all laughed.

"What next, Jo? 'Sons put on the right path by mail.' It's a joke all right and so are you and Hal. You can't do a thing with that kid! When he stole the preacher's white horse and painted 'Hell' on it you just laughed. Why don't you beat him up a little?" inquired Jones good-naturedly.

"But he is not downright bad, he is just mischievous and full of life. I can't do anything to him because it is all just what I used to do when I was a kid, – behold the monument!"

"He looks so much like you that I always think something has happened to the clock and it is twenty years ago whenever I see him. He's got your snappy grey eyes and black hair and Sally's Greek instead of our honored partner's 'Roaming.'"

Jo was always pleased when it was said that his son looked like him, for he knew that they were both of them extremely goodlooking. And, too, he was secretly proud of his slightly Roman nose, which did add a certain air of distinction to such a young man.

He dictated a letter to Uncle Sam and two days later Hal got the first installment.

"Dear Hal:

"When I was a boy of twelve, just your age, I had just about the reputation you have. But my father had a family of seven children, of which I was the youngest, so when I cut up he knew just what to do with me. He realized that I had a great deal of surplus energy and having no good way of working it off, I always got into mischief and sometimes into rather serious trouble.

"Your Dad told me about your stealing the minister's horse and putting a large red 'Hell' on one of his sides. When I was a boy I remember that I made a bomb out of a little powder and an old sock and put it under the porch of a Negro church (Hal, as man to man, I trust you not to try this stunt). Of course I stayed to watch the fun. I thought the fuse was longer than it was and came closer to adjust it – Bang! and I was left with no eyebrows. I was too scared to run and the darkeys began to pour out, threatening darkly as to the future welfare of my soul. They caught me and took me to the county lockup. That evening my brother came and bailed me out. My father asked me where my eyebrows were, and I said, 'I reckon part of them are by the Nigger church.' Of course he gradually got the details and a very thick silence followed. Then he told me just what I am going to tell you. But first, – Hal, don't you think it's funny what a passion all boys have to torment the parsons of both the white and black race? I do.

"Dad said that I needed to be kept busy and with something that gave me pleasure. He was never strong on punishment and he suggested something that pleased me mightily. He said that if I would build a canoe and a pair of paddles by the last of May he would give me and three of my friends a camp for two weeks by the river. I was glad my eyebrows were gone, for who doesn't like to camp?

"Now, Son, you ask your dad if he won't make this same agreement. You have a month to do it in and I reckon you can have a dandy canoe made by that time.

"Let me know what Mr. Allen says.

"Sincerely,

"Uncle Sam."

Hal looked over the letter at his daddy and thought a minute. Then he said: "Jo, this here Uncle Sam ain't so worse. Here's a pretty decent thought that rattled out of his head." Mr. Allen took the letter and read it and then he, too, thought a minute.

"I'm on, Son," he said, "and you can have your friends to help you."

"All right! Then shall I write and tell our darling Unkil that it's a go?"

And this was the letter Uncle Sam got from the "wayward youth he was trying to straighten out":

"Mr. Uncle Sam,

– Building,

New York.

"Dear Uncle S.:

"Yours of the inst. rec'd., first. Jo – that's my dad and He's a peach too let me tell you – says your idea suits him fine and anyway he always goes to New York the first two weeks in June on business and then I have to stay with Aunt Maria at Sunny Glen and I hate it because she is so clean. I hate to milk too and she is so afraid I'll get drowned when I swim in the icepond. She is a terrible nut because I can swim fine. I've got a monogram for my sweater for swimming at the Y. M. C. A. pool and that's bigger and deeper than old spit-in-the-fire Aunt Maria's dinky little icepond. Daddy took me in the roadster over to the next town to order the stuff for the canoe. What do you think would be a good name for her after we finish it? We've put up part of the skeleton already. Sometimes on a straight road Jo lets me run the roadster – it's a Mercer. Do you like Mercers? I like them the best and so does Jo. I can't change gear very good yet and I am too young to get a license but I am strong enough to crank it. I've got right much muscle. Did you like to fight when you were a boy? I love my black eyes on other people. Jo says it is tough to fight, so he boxes with me. He can box fine, too. He can beat me swimming and diving all to pieces, too. I've got to stop now because Pete is whistling for me to come catch with him.

"Rept. HAL ALLEN."

CHAPTER II

"Jo, I wish you would bring me a Remington rifle from New York. I'm old enough to have a good one now, and tell my reformer I named the canoe 'Uncle Sam'. I like that old man so much I wish he'd come down here to live."

"So long, Son! I hope you will have a peach of a time at your camp. Oh, yes! Aunt Maria told me to be sure and tell you not to go swimming but once a day, but I always lived in my bathing suit – at least we will say I had a bathing suit – and you can do the same."

It was only an hour's trip to New York and Jo was busy thinking about the change in Hal and wondering if Uncle Sam would consider it strange for him to invite him to go home on a visit. He decided he would go by Uncle Sam's office and speak to him and make an engagement for the theatre that night.

Jo Allen stopped a minute in front of Uncle Sam's office door to get out a card and then he rang the bell. A very handsome, auburn-haired, green-eyed girl answered his ring and he gave her his card with a rather bewildered smile, for he wondered why such an old man as Uncle Sam kept such a darned good-looking female to tickle the keys.

"May I see Uncle Sam?" he asked.

"Why, certainly!" she said. "Please come in."

Her "Certainly" sounded Southern to Jo. He might have thought some more but he was interrupted by the girl.

"You will sit down, won't you?" she smiled at him from her swivel chair.

"Thank you! Will Uncle Sam be along soon do you think?" he queried.

"Oh! I thought you understood. Why, Mr. Allen, I am Uncle Sam."

"Ohgoodlord!" Jo said it very loud and as though it were all one word. Then after a minute, "What the devil will Hal say when he finds his Uncle Sam is a woman?"

"I see no reason why he should know." Uncle Sam was very calm and unconcerned.

"But you see I swore I'd bring Uncle Sam back on a visit. I had it all planned out that Uncle Sam and I would take in a show to-night…"

"I don't reckon Uncle Sam would mind going to the theatre, Mr. Allen. You might ask him," said the girl very frankly.

"Good for you, Uncle Sam, – you are a peach, after all. Hal may be disappointed, but, believe me, I am not. I wish you would tell me your name."

Jo was looking much happier now. He had forgotten what Hal would say when he got home Uncle Samless, – but really her hair and eyes were enough to make him forget and her voice was very musical with its Southern accent.