"I expect we'll have company to-day," she told him comfortably. "We always do when there's preaching at the church, and I 'low I'd better stay home and see to the dinner." The Elder had scarcely made his chastened adieux when the Lusk girls came through the grove walking on either side of a young man. The Lusk girls were Judith's nearest neighbours--if you excepted Huldah Spiller at Jim Cal's cabin, and at the present Judith certainly was in the mind to make an exception of her. The sisters were seldom seen apart; narrow shouldered, short waisted, thin limbed young creatures, they were even at seventeen bowing to a deprecating stoop. Their little faces were alike, short-chinned with pink mouths inclined to be tremulous, the eyes big, blue, and half-frightened in expression, and the drab hair drawn away from the small foreheads so tightly that it looked almost grey. They inevitably reminded one of a pair of blue and white night-moths, scarcely fitted for a daylight world, and continually afraid of it. "Cousin Lacey's over from the Far Cove," called Pendrilla before they reached Judith. "Ain't it fine? Ef we-all can git up a play-party he says he'll shore come ef we let him know in time." The young fellow with them, their cousin Lacey Rountree, showed sufficient resemblance to mark the family type, but his light eyes were lit with reckless fires, and his short chin was carried with a defiant tilt. "What you foolin' along o' that old feller for, Judith?" he asked jerking an irreverent thumb after the departing Elder. "I wasn't fooling with him," returned Judith, her red lips demure, her brown eyes laughing above them through their thick fringe of lashes. "Elder Drane was consulting me about church matters--sech as children like you have no call to meddle with." Young Rountree smiled, "I'll bet he was!" picking up a stone and firing it far into the blue in sheer exuberance of youthful joy. "Did he name anything about a weddin' in church?" "Elder Drane is a mighty fine man," asserted Judith, suddenly sober. "Any gal might be glad to git him. But its my belief and opinion that his heart is buried with his first--or his second," and she laughed out suddenly at the unintentional humorous conclusion she had made. "See here, Jude," the boy put it boldly as the four young people strolled toward the house, "you're too pretty and sweet to be anybody's thirdly. Next time old man Drane comes pesterin' round you, you tell him that you're promised to me--hear?" Again Judith laughed. It is impossible to talk seriously to a boy with whom one has played hat-ball and prisoner's base, whose hair one has pulled, and who has, in retort courteous, rolled one in the dust. "I'm in earnest if I ever was in my life," asserted Lacey, taking it quite as a matter of course that Cliantha and Pendrilla should be made party to his courting.