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 

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