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type of woman who requires a certain amount of elegant comedy to spice her life. She was going to confront him in the armor of correct dress. "Truly, I'm going to invite you in," she concluded, daring again to smile.

"Tricks is no good," warned Cal. "Shut the door if you like an' bolt it same as you did afore, but toreckly I choose I'll smash my way in to you."

"You won't have to smash!" she exclaimed, indignant at having her word doubted even when doubt was natural on his part. "Give me fifteen minutes, please, and then I'll invite you in."

"And I'll come," he swore, doing it loudly that his voice should follow her well, for she had disappeared inside the house.

In not fifteen minutes but ten-surely the quickest change on record-she was in an ancient but still lovely ruin of a modest "party dress," a flounced affair of pale blue and silver. Her hair, which had been literally thrown into a coiffure, looked unusually beautiful.

"Couldn't have produced anything as satisfactory if I had combed and coiled for an hour," she told her reflection in the mirror.

Then she shattered the evening peace of The McAllister by appearing beside him with his creased but gorgeously satin-faced Tuxedo coat, and literally hustling him into it.

"The good Lord bless me and save me!" he spluttered, too much taken by storm to resist. "Will you explain, my love, why it is your pleasure to transform me into a mountebank?"

"You look like the duke-iest duke in the three king'doms," she said admiringly, pinning a flower to his

lapel, "and please talk up to it, Grandpa, for we are going to have company." She opened the parlor door on the porch and observed musically to the starry darkness, "Won't you kindly step around to this door, Mr. Tandy, and come in?"

T

CHAPTER XIII

HE clumping rapidity with which the Georgian obeyed the request to step around, and the

swift lunge with which he thrust himself inside the placid parlor, proved that his previous doubts concerning the invitation had gathered strength during the wait.

The plunging entrance, moreover, put him at a terrific disadvantage immediately, it nearly resulting in landing him upon all fours, for he skidded several feet upon a rug, sliding over the oiled floor as over wet ice, and righting himself only after a series of undignified jerks.

None of this conduced to his ease of manner or comfort of mind.

"Won't you sit down?" asked Laurie rather gravely, carrying a pained suggestion that Cal had skidded and skated from unseemly choice.

Her grandfather, with his aristocratic white head still reared haughtily as the result of his encounter with his enforced coat and ridiculous buttonhole bouquet, greeted the visitor with a majestic "How do you do, sir!" using exactly the tone of voice with which he would have uttered "Get out of my sight, sir!" Against his high-backed chair of cathedral solemnity his thin old face glowered very impressively. An ascetic bishop sitting on the inefficiencies of a flighty curate would have worn just such a look.

Laurie precipitately and purposely sat herself in the

only other large chair left, thus relegating Cal Tandy to a spidery-legged one owning a vast amount of style but absolutely no stability. When he sat down upon it it took a free spin, as the rug had done.

At this exhibition of added flightiness on the part of the curate the ascetic bishop positively glared. Even worse than he hated American journalism The McAllister hated a parlor clown.

And that parlor merited anything but circus-ring manners, being as clever an imitation of the real thing as was ever effected by girlish good taste and youthful courage, aided by oiled dust cloths in the near past, and assisted prodigiously in the present by the mellowing influence of the lamps. The flooring of dark pine wood was as smooth as constant rubbings could make it, and it splendidly showed up the few rugs. Sitting decorously close to the walls, the bits of oldfashioned furniture gleamed quite royally, and every piece whose nature permitted of it upbore a vase of flowers.

Cal Tandy's track across the floor was marked by a thin trail of sand from his heavy brogans. He occupied his parlor chair as incongruously and threateningly as a mountain lion would have done. His thick forehead-lock hung into his eyes like a mane through which his quick glances gleamed ferociously and suspiciously. Fully as much as he was dazed by the surprising vision in blue and silver was he uneasily fascinated by the fine severity of the old gentle

man.

"Grandfather is extremely astonished at the attitude just taken by the British Admiralty," said the girl, explainingly, but using an explanation which merely dazed the more. She gracefully clasped her

braceleted hands in her blue silk lap and tilted her pretty head at a society angle. The excitement of the comedy had put a vivid rose-red flush into her cheeks, a flame as daring as rouge.

"The Premier's opinion has amazed me amazed me!" said The McAllister, austerely following his granddaughter's conversational cue. "What, sir, may be your explanation of it?"

The fiery old gentleman asked this question with quite honorable intentions of properly entertaining his guest, having long ago learned the important lesson that, in Florida, no man's grimy outward condition is to be taken as an intimation of corresponding inward murk. And he rather naturally felt that no man without college-bred aplomb and well-nourished brains would undertake to pay an evening visit in turpentineblackened overalls and feel equipped.

"Uh?" questioned Cal, growling it sullenly.

ness.

There was suffering in the growl as well as sullenHe keenly realized that his former valuable assets of height, and big bone, and sinew, and bronzed good looks-as bold as they were bronzed-had all dropped unaccountably below par. They were no longer of value or of benefit to him. Here he found himself in need of a subtle something which the uncaring stars of his birth had barred forever from his horoscope.

The girl of his hot chase—she who had been frightened of him while in worker's clothes to match his own, and who therefore should logically have remained more or less frightened of him till the end of time-was now a serene princess, worlds removed from him, worlds above.

"I am not surprised, sir, that you require to think

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