No one spoke to her, except Mrs. Carson and Pearl, to send her on trips to the kitchen, but it did not occur to her to feel slighted. It was less embarrassing to be ignored than to be plied with questions. Sometimes she raised her fluttering eyelids to steal a quick glance at David Nash, and every glance deepened her joy that he was there, that he sat at the same table with her, ate the same food, some of which she had cooked. His superiority to the others at that table was so strikingly evident that he seemed god-like to her. His pride, his poise, his golden, masculine beauty, his strength, his evident breeding, his ambition, formed such a contrast to the qualities of the orphaned boys she had known that it did not occur to her to hope that he would notice her. But once when her blue eyes stole a fleeting glimpse of his face she was startled to see that his eyes were regarding her soberly, sympathetically. He smiled—a brief flash of light in his eyes, an upward curl to his well-cut lips. She was so covered with a happy confusion that she did not hear Mrs. Carson’s harsh nasal voice commanding her to bring more butter from the cellar until the farmer’s wife uttered her order a second time. In spite of the prodigious amount of food eaten, the meal was quickly over. It was not half-past eight when Clem Carson scraped back his chair, wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve. “Now, Sally, I’ll leave you to clear the table and wash up,” Mrs. Carson said briskly. “I’ve got to measure and sugar my blackberries for tomorrow’s jam-making. A farmer’s wife can’t take Sunday off this time o’ year, and have fruit spoil on her hands.” While Sally was stacking the soiled supper plates on the dining table, the telephone rang three short and one long ring, and Pearl, who had been almost forcibly holding David Nash in conversation, sprang to answer it. The instrument was fastened to the dining room wall. Pearl stood lolling against it, a delighted smile on her face, her fingers picking at the torn wallpaper. “Un-hunh!... Sure!... Oh, that’ll be swell, Ross! I was just wishing for some excitement!... How many’s coming? Five?... Oh, you hush! Sure, we’ll dance! We got a grand radio, you know—get Chicago and.... All right, hurry up! And, oh, say, Ross, you might pick up another girl. Sadie Pratt, or somebody. I got a sweetie of my own. Un-hunh! David Nash, a junior from A. & M., is staying with us this summer. Didn’t you know?... Am I? I’ll tell the world! You just wait till you see him, and then _you’ll_ want to jump in the river!... Aw, quit your kidding!... Well, hurry! ’Bye!” Before the one-sided conversation was concluded, David Nash had quietly left the room by way of the kitchen door. When Sally staggered in with her armload of soiled dishes she found David at the big iron sink, pouring hot water from a heavy black teakettle into a granite dishpan.