Five minutes later the door-bell rang; and, when she opened the door, there stood Clytie Dodd, a brilliant red feather surrounding a speck of a hat, and her face painted and powdered more wickedly than ever. She was wearing a yellow organdie dress with scallops on the bottom and adornments of colored spheres of cloth attached with black stitches at intervals over the frock. She carried a green parasol airily, and there was a “man” with an incipient and tenderly nursed mustache waiting for her at the gate. She greeted Cornelia profusely, and talked very loudly and very fast. “Is Kay here? I’m just dying to see him and kid him about having his picture in the paper. He always said he’d never get his there. But isn’t it great, though? Some hero, I’ll tell the world! Who was the kid? Anybody belonging to the family? The paper didn’t state. Oh, darn! I’m sorry Kay isn’t here. I wanted him to meet my friend,” nodding toward the man at the gate. “We’ve got a date on for tonight, and we want him and his friend Mr. Barlock. Some girl friends of mine are coming, and we’re going to have a dance and a big feed. It’s just the kind of thing Kay likes. When’ll he be back? Where is he? At the garage? We stopped there, but Pat said he’d went off with a car for some high muckymuck. I thought p’raps he’d stopped off here to take you a ride er something. Well, I s’pose I’ll have to leave a message. Say, Ed, what time we going to start? Eight? Oh, rats! we oughtta start at half past seven. It’s a good piece out to that Horseheads Inn I was tellin’ you ’bout. We’ll start at half past seven. Say, you tell your brother to call me up soon’s he gets here. He often phones from the drug-store. Tell him I’ll give the details. But in case he don’t get me tell him we’ll stop by here for him at half past seven. Tell him not to keep us waiting. I gotta go on now ’cause we gotta tell two other people, a girl and a man. It’s awful annoying not having telephones everywhere. I don’t know what we’d ever do without ours. S’-long! Don’t forget to tell Kay!” and she flitted down the steps and out the gate to her “man.” CHAPTER XXIII That awful girl! Cornelia shut the door, and dropped weakly into a chair. Her punishment was come upon her. She might have known she ought not to meddle with a girl like that, inviting her to the house and making her feel free there, setting the seal of family friendship on an intimacy that never ought to have been between her and the son of the house.