“They was all staring at her here at dinner. There was four men in the kitchen trying to get a squint through the door, until the Chinaman threw ’em out. And she knew jest as well as any one, and liked it. But you oughter have seen her pretend she didn’t notice it. Jest eat her dinner sort er slow and careless as if they was no one round more important than a yaller dog. Only now and then she’d throw back her head so’s her curls ’ud fall back and the diamond ear-rings ’ud show. I said to paw flat-footed, ‘Go and wait on her yourself, since you think she’s so dreadful handsome. I don’t do no waiting on that stuck-up thing.’” Mitty turned away to the window. Her recital of the sensation created by the proud Miss Gracey seemed to affect her. There was a tremulous undernote in her voice; her bosom, under its tight-drawn pink calico covering, heaved as if she were about to weep. The Colonel noted with surprise these signs of storm, and was wondering what would be best to say to divert the conversation into less disturbing channels, when Mitty, looking out of the window, craned her neck and evidently followed with her eyes a passing figure. “There goes June Allen,” she said; “don’t she look shabby?” The name caused the Colonel to stop eating. He raised his eyes to his companion. She was looking at him with reviving animation in her glance. “That’s the daughter of old man Allen what’s squatted on your land,” she explained. “You ain’t ever seen the girls, have you?” The Colonel, who had finished, laid his napkin on the table. “No,” he answered, “are they children?” “Children!” echoed Mitty, “I guess not. June’s twenty and Rosamund’s nineteen. I know ’em real well. They’re friends of mine.” He raised his eyebrows, surprised and relieved at the information. It would be less hard to oust the squatter if his children were of this age than if they were helpless infants. “What sort of girls are they?” he asked. “Oh they’re real lovely girls. And they’ve got a wonderful education. They know lots. They’re learned. Their mother learned it to them--” Mitty stopped, a sound outside striking her ear. The Colonel was looking at her with quizzical inquiry. The picture of the squatter’s children, as educated, much less “learned,” filled him with amused astonishment. He was just about to ask his informant for a fuller explanation, when she rose to her feet, her face suffused with color, her eyes fastened in a sudden concentration of attention on something outside the window. “Here they are,” she said in a low, hurried voice. “Get up and look at them.”