Nothing had been said about Clytie Dodd. Carey had thanked his sister for the party and for taking so much trouble to make a pleasant evening, but he utterly ignored the presence of the girl who had been the cause of the whole affair. It was as if she had not been there. Mr. Copley had asked as he sat down to dinner the next evening after the birthday: “Where did you pick up that queer Dodd girl you had here?” and Cornelia had answered quite casually, as if it didn’t matter at all, “Oh, she was just a girl I thought perhaps we ought to know,” and slipped back into the kitchen to get the potatoes just as Carey entered the dining-room. He must have heard the conversation, and heard his father’s reply: “Well, I guess she’s not quite our sort, is she? I guess we can get along without her, can’t we?”—he made no comment, and began to talk at once eagerly about the new stone porch he was going to build. It appeared that he had discovered a lot of stone that was being dug from the street where they were putting down new paving, and it was to be had for little more than the carting away. Pat would let him have his truck at night, and he was going to bring the first load that very evening. Brand was coming around to help. Brand wanted to have a hand in the building. Brand appeared soon after, coming breezily out to the dining-room without an invitation and sitting down for a piece of lemon pie as if he were a privileged friend of long standing. There was nothing backward about Brand. Yet somehow they all liked him, and Cornelia could see that Carey was pleased that they did. She felt a glow of thankfulness in her heart that it was possible to like one of Carey’s friends when the other one was so unspeakably impossible.