All these thoughts flashed through the captain's mind in an instant; and yet, if he was shrewd enough to cease his earnest attention to the girls before it became noticeable, his mind was busy all that afternoon, in spite of the effort to control his words, with surmises and a most natural desire to see more and hear something about these beautiful girls. As the party came into the house, Diantha found herself close to tall, quiet John Stevens. She looked at him in surprise; she did not remember to have seen John look so handsome. He had on a new suit, and he looked so clean and wholesome, so true and so brave that she instinctively accorded him a rather more gracious smile than she altogether intended. She did not notice this latter fact, however, until she saw how coolly he accepted her unusual demonstration of welcome. Then, to be sure she felt humiliated to think that she had been even a little glad to see him. "Did you ever see Ellen Tyler look so sweet in her life?" asked John. "Ellen is a fine girl." Now, Dian was and always had been a very generous girl, but this unexpected and utterly uncalled for remark on the part of John Stevens was not precisely to her liking. But as he looked so unconscious of her pleasure or displeasure, she wisely refrained from offering any sharp admonition or spicy council, as was so natural to practical Dian. "I am of the opinion that your gay captain has the same way of thinking," she answered, and as she spoke, John looked in the captain's direction, and he, too, could see the vain attempts of the officer to keep his eyes away from Ellen's fascinating features. At once John sauntered up to Ellen and never in her life had Ellen known this reticent man to show so much animation and gay interest in her as he did that afternoon. "Why, John," asked Ellen herself, banteringly, "what has come over you? I have tried my best to go with you for two years past and you have insisted on being only friendly and brotherly and all that; and just now, unless I am mistaken, you are trying pretty hard to flirt with me. What's it all about, anyway?" John answered her in his grave, quizzical way that his meaning was even more earnest than apparent, and then begged her to go out in the garden while the others were at supper. "I can't possibly, I must help wait on the table, you know. I am to have special charge of the head of the table, so won't I have a fine chance to catch the captain's eye?" Just then Diantha was invited to sing, and she sat down to the little melodeon with modest assurance. After she had sung twice, Harvey joined her with his concertina, and they both sang and played with charming compliance to the repeated calls of "more, more."