jealous, for I can see already that he’s a wretched flirt. I won’t even look at him, though he is awfully, awfully handsome!”

So with a sigh, whose subtle meaning she could not understand, she turned her back on the wretched Beresford, and entered readily into an animated conversation with Otho, maddening her silent admirer with such keen jealousy that he could bear it no longer.

“Let us go and dance,” he said to Maybelle, hoarsely.

“Oh, I’m too lazy to move. Go and find another partner,” she laughed.

“But I’m not acquainted with any of the girls here.”

“Otho, go along and introduce him to some girls, and I’ll stay with Floy and tell her about my lovely trip to Europe last year.”

Beresford, disappointed in a faint hope that she might have proffered Floy to him as a partner, went away with Otho, and Maybelle made herself agreeable to her companion.

At last she observed, patronizingly:

“You’ve never been anywhere, have you, Floy?”

“Not since mamma brought me a little girl back to the farm,” Floy answered, flushing sensitively, for she felt the sting in Maybelle’s patronizing tone.

But the latter continued, gently and purringly:

“It’s too bad your having to stay with those poor, hard-working[20] people, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you like to support yourself, Floy?”

[20]

“I should not know how to earn a penny,” murmured Floy, who was like the naughty Brier-Rose of the poem:

“Suppose I tell you what papa was saying about you last night?” continued Maybelle.

“Yes,” Floy answered, helplessly.

“He was saying that he needed two new salesgirls in his big dry-goods store in New York, and he wondered if any girls in Mount Vernon would like to go. He said he had thought of you, and that maybe old John Banks would be glad to have you find a situation and help earn your own living.”

Floy reddened, paled, then gasped:

“I don’t believe Uncle John would like it at all. He loves me—he 

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