The Major drove back to town in his side-bar buggy behind his aged gray mule at sunset, taking Miss Parish with him. Miss India retired to her room, and Julian and Holly strolled off together down the road. Winthrop drew the arm-chair up to the fireplace in his room and smoked and read until supper time. At that meal only he and Holly and Julian were present, and the conversation was confined principally to the former two. Julian was plainly out of sorts and short of temper; his wooing, Winthrop concluded, had not gone very well that day. Holly seemed troubled, but whether over Julian’s unhappiness or his impoliteness Winthrop could not guess. After supper they went out to the porch for a while together, but Winthrop soon bade them good-night. For some time through the opened windows he could hear the faint squeaking of the joggling-board and the fainter hum of their low voices. At ten Julian’s horse was brought around, and he clattered away in the starlit darkness toward Marysville. He heard Holly closing the door down-stairs, heard her feet patter up the uncarpeted stairway, heard her humming a little tune under her breath. The lamp was still lighted on his table, and doubtless the radiance of it showed under the door, for Holly’s footsteps came nearer and nearer along the hall until―― “Good-night, slave!” she called, softly. “Good-night, Miss Holly,” he answered. He heard her footsteps dying away, and finally the soft closing of a door. Thoughtfully he refilled his pipe and went back to the chair in front of the dying fire.... The ashes were cold and a chill breeze blew through the open casements. Winthrop arose with a shiver, knocked the ashes from his pipe and dropped it on the mantel. “There’s no fool like an old――like a middle-aged fool,” he muttered, as he blew out the lamp. X. [Illustration] Holly’s birthday was quite an event at Waynewood. Aunt Venus outdid herself and there never was such a dinner, from the okra soup to the young guineas and on to the snowy syllabub and the birthday cake with its eighteen flaring pink candles. Uncle Major was there, as were two of Holly’s girl friends, and the little party of six proved most congenial. Holly was in the highest spirits; everyone she knew had been so kind to her. Aunt India had given her dimity for a new dress and a pair of the gauziest white silk stockings that ever crackled against the ear. The dimity was white sprinkled with little Dresden flowers of deep pink. Holly and Rosa and Edith had spent fully an hour before dinner in enthusiastic planning and the fate of the white dimity was settled. It was to be made up over pale pink, and the skirt was to be quite plain save for a single deep flounce at the bottom. Rosa had just the pattern for it and Holly was to drive out to Bellair in a day or so and get it. The Major had brought a blue plush case lined with maroon satin and holding three pairs of scissors, a bodkin, and two ribbon-runners. [Illustration]