Of all the women present the two whose opinion she most dreaded and toward whom she felt absolute aversion, neither congratulated nor praised her in any way. Miss Loomis smiled and bowed and said, "Good-evening, Mrs. Davies," in very cheery manner when they met in promenade. Mrs. Cranston bowed and smiled gravely, stopped, and extended her hand, which Almira, with heightened color and drooping eyelids, took nervously.
"I need not say how we deplore the orders, Mrs. Davies. I'm so sorry to have missed you to-day. Won't you lunch and dine with us to-morrow and talk over plans? We shall be so glad to have you."
And Almira faltered that she had promised to lunch at Mrs. Darling's and spend the afternoon, and was afraid she couldn't promise to come to dinner, and Mrs. Cranston understood. They went home early, did the Cranston's,—that is, early for Fort Scott,—whereas Mrs. Davies, influenced by her energetic friends, danced until long after midnight, and then sat up and talked it all over until long after two.
"Willett's simply gone on you," was Mrs. Flight's significant remark. "No wonder lots of our primmers looked blue to-night. Willett used to dance with Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Hay all the time, but he hardly looked at them to-night. And did you see the look Miss Loomis gave him when he invited her? He says she snubbed him outright." No, Almira hadn't seen, but she had caught almost every look that Willett gave her, and was thinking more of those and of what he said, and of his plea that she should be at Mrs. Darling's for luncheon next day,—they wouldn't drive back to Braska until afternoon,—and of the ball they meant to give at the railway hotel in town, to return the courtesies of their friends at the fort. He was to lead the german, and might have to lead it with Mrs. Courtenay of the bank, who was the leader of local society but couldn't dance any more than he could fly, and if Mrs. Davies would only promise to be there all would be bliss. Mrs. Davies had said she could not be there. They were in mourning for Mr. Davies's mother, as Willett well knew, and she expected Percy home within a week or ten days. Captain Devers had assured her it couldn't be for longer, and indeed, oh, no! she couldn't think of going to a ball in town.
But she did think of it very much indeed. She thought of it, and the dance of the evening gone, far more than she did of Percy and his party now sleeping in the snow or shivering in the wind at Dismal River. She wrote him one of her long letters Thursday morning, spending over an hour in the effort, and an equal time in her toilet for the luncheon at the Darlings. She was in the midst of this charming function, assisted by Mrs. Flight, when the gong on the front door announced the coming of a visitor. "I can't see anybody now, can I?" she hazarded to Mrs. Flight, and Mrs. Flight thought she really wouldn't have time, and so whispered to Katty, as that Milesian maid-of-all-work bustled through to answer the summons, "Mrs. Davies will have to be excused to callers," and the parley at the hall door was brief enough. Almira and her assistant listened,—as what woman would not?—heard the courteous, cordial tone of inquiry for Mrs. Davies, and Katty's flurried "Begs to be excused, mum," and there was no need of the question which Mrs. Flight asked,—"Who was it, Katty?" for both knew Mrs. Cranston's voice.
"I've done my best, Wilbur," said Meg, as she threw herself on the arm of the big easy-chair in which her lord was reading the Chicago papers before the snapping, sparkling fireplace. "She did not want to see me last night, and she practically refused to see me this morning. She has chosen her intimates, and it is a case of like unto like. We are not congenial. Yet I so wanted to be a friend to him and to her."
Cranston dropped his paper and threw his strong arm about her waist, and when a man turns from the contemplation of his favorite journal to that of the face of his wife her queendom is assured.
"You've done all I could ask, dear," was his answer, "but we may have to pocket our pride a little. She is very young and inexperienced. She goes to Darlings' to-day, does she?—and that coxcomb Willett is to be there, too." The Times slipped to the floor, forgotten, and Margaret, saying nothing more, drew closer to his side and nestled her round, soft cheek against his weather-beaten jowl, and Agatha, coming quickly in from her supervision of the boys' lessons in the adjoining room, went back to the book-littered table unnoticed. This frontier Darby and Joan, whose tin wedding had passed and gone long months before, seemed spooning yet. It's another "way we have in the army," and long may it live and linger.