Dade, swinging the jacket she had been carrying on her arm, caught Emily about the waist and led her into the house at a livelier step than she had known for many a day. Emily took her upstairs, where they could be near the new baby, who was taking a morning nap, and once in the old familiar room that Dade had known as Emily's in their girlhood, she plumped Emily down on the box couch, then plumped herself down beside her, and when the vibration of the springs had spent itself, and she had ceased to bounce up and down, Dade impetuously turned, and fixing her eyes on Emily under the brim of the mannish alpine hat she wore, she seized the matron by both shoulders and said: "Em, Ah'm engaged!" "Again?" smiled Emily, with the indulgence of the elder woman to a girl. "_Again!_" cried Dade, repeating Emily's word, and arching her brows. She released her hold of Emily's shoulders, and throwing her arms behind her, rested on them like two props, while she regarded Emily with a mimicry of reproach. But her black eyebrows twitched disobediently in the mirth that was turbulent that day in her whole being. "Again!" she repeated, trying to prolong the pose. "Yo' speak as if mah husband was d'aid, and Ah'd been mah'ied the second tahm!" Emily gave a little distant laugh. "I'm glad, dear," she said. Dade regarded her curiously, and then instantly voiced her thought. "Yo' all talk lak some kind old auntie!" she said. "Why, gyrl, yo' ahn't old's Ah am. Mah heaht's wohn to a frazzle. Ah've been engaged befo', oh, a dozen tahms, Ah reckon--mo'n yo' all evah dreamed of!" "A dozen times!" exclaimed Emily, in real amazement, and then with a touch of the spirit of their old intimacy she said: "But you never told me, Dade, only that once!" "Co'se not," said Dade; "they really didn't count. Ah was on and off with them so quick. Ah wanted to wait to see if--if--the'd _take_ befo' writing yo', but they nevah did, only the one with the baron, po' ol' soul!" "Did that one take?" asked Emily, with a languid return to the remoteness her own experience had drawn her to, and with a sigh, also, that her heart so quickly lost the perfume of the youth that a moment before had been wafted into it. Dade was serious an instant. "Well, yes. Ah thought it did, but yo' know, Em, those Eu'opeans ah simply _im-possible_, that's all." "And you were engaged to twelve of them! I thought the chaperon was an institution in Europe. Yours couldn't have watched you very carefully." "Oh, they're just to see that the gyrls _dew_ mah'y some one--that's all--but----" "You escaped?" "Yes, it's different with an Ame'ican gyrl, yo' know; they won't be watched, and Ah escaped."