"Sally, dear!" exclaimed Henrietta, kissing her on both cheeks. "How glad I am to see you! You can't imagine." Which was a statement without warrant of fact. If there was one thing that Sally could do better than another, it was to imagine. "Come up with me and show me my room. I've an ocean of things to say to you. Fox will excuse us, I know." "Fox will have to, I suppose," he said, "whether he wants to or not." "You see," laughed Henrietta, "he knows his place." "Oh, yes," Fox agreed. "I know my place." Sally had not seen Henrietta for four or five years. Henrietta was a lively girl, small and dainty and very pretty. Her very motions were like those of a butterfly, fluttering with no apparent aim and then alighting suddenly and with great accuracy upon the very flower whose sweetness she had meant, all along, to capture; but lightly and for a moment. The simile is Sally's, not mine, and she thought of it at the instant of greeting her; in fact, it was while Henrietta was kissing her, and she could not help wondering whether Henrietta--But there she stopped, resolutely. Such thoughts were uncharitable. In spite of Sally's wonderings, she was captivated by Henrietta's daintiness and beauty. Sally never thought at all about her own looks, although they deserved more than a thought; for--well, one might have asked Jane Spencer or Richard Torrington, or even Fox, who had just seen her for the first time in years. Or Everett Morton might have been prevailed upon to give an opinion, although Everett's opinion would have counted for little. He would have appraised her good points as he would have appraised those of a horse or a dog; he might even have compared her with his favorite horse, Sawny,--possibly to the disadvantage of Sawny, although there is more doubt about that than there should be,--or to his last year's car. But he was driving Sawny now more than he was driving his car, for there was racing every afternoon on the Cow Path by the members of the Gentlemen's Driving Club. No, on the whole, I should not have advised going to Everett. Sally, I say, not being vain or given to thinking about her own looks, thought Henrietta was the prettiest thing she had ever seen. So, when Henrietta issued the command which has been recorded, Sally went without a word of protest, leaving Fox and her mother standing in the back parlor beside the table with its ancient stained and cut green cloth. Fox was not looking at her, but at the doorway through which Sally had just vanished. "Well," he said at last, turning to her, "I call that rather a cold sort of a greeting, after four years." Mrs. Ladue laughed softly. "What should she have done, you great boy?" she asked. "Should she have fallen upon your neck and kissed you?" "Why, yes," Fox replied, "something of the sort. I shouldn't have minded. I think it might have been rather nice. But I suppose it might be a hard thing to do."