“No.” Dirk shook his head hard. “All you’ll do, most likely, is sit around and look the part. You’re to be a captive white princess, if you want to know, and we’re going to have a tournament, an Indian tournament, about you.” “Fighting? Does Aunt Alida know?” asked Beth nervously. “Sure she knows, has to order the eats, doesn’t she? Don’t get scared, Beth; nothing’ll happen,” Dirk assured Beth kindly. Natalie and Alys had no more desire to go to Dirk’s Twelfth Night party than he had to have them come. He scorned “a lot of girls”; they looked down on “a little boys’ party,” so they were quits, each faction comfortably superior to the other. The girls went to lunch and to a matinée party with a friend of theirs. Beth found herself wondering whether the honor of being the one girl invited was not going to prove a burden. She watched Frieda making her pretty in her Christmas white and gold costume with no little dread of this Twelfth Night revel. Dirk was waiting for her on the stairs. She found him a forbidding brave in Indian costume, feathers, paint, tomahawk and all, and his whoop hailing her sent her heart to the soles of her feet, though she knew him, of course. “Dirk, they won’t all yell like that, right in my ears, and flourish a tomahawk, will they?” Beth protested. “Oh, come now, Beth, be a sport!” Dirk reasoned with her. “I suppose they will, else what would be the use of dressing up like Indians? You stood the Christmas horns, you ought to be able to stand boys yelling. If I’d thought you were going to be finnified-fine-ladyish, like Alys, I wouldn’t have asked you, either.” In her heart Beth wished he had not, but she felt in honor bound not to be any more disappointing than she could help. “All right, Dirk; I won’t mind--much, and I’ll play my best. What do you want me to do?” she asked. “I knew you’d be a sport,” cried Dirk, relieved. “Why, the fellows are all in there. I bring you in as a captive, see? And they all set upon us, but my tribe--we’re evenly divided--fights the hostile Indians, and so I get over to my wigwam. We’ve got it all made up; they tackle me when I go in. Then I leave you in the wigwam and we all fight; regular gym stunts. Bob Leonard’s to be umpire and see it’s all on the level. My side has to win, ’cause if it doesn’t, why, the other side gets the captive, see? We’ll have to try, all right; we’re divided as fair as we could make it.” “What happens if the other side gets the captive--or if your side keeps her?” asked Beth with pardonable anxiety. “Why, why--I don’t know! We keep her, or we don’t; that’s about all; win the fight, don’t you see? After that--well, after that I guess we cool off and have the eats,” Dirk explained. Beth laughed. “Sounds like ‘the king of France went up the hill with twenty thousand men.’ I guess I needn’t mind playing that,” she said.