Lifting a can of coffee containing about a quart, the drover said impressively, and with an attempt at great stateliness:
"Beautiful ladies and honorable gentlemen here assembled, I would respectfully ask you to drink to a toast in this harmless beverage: The United States of Ameriky! When the two great elemental races—the sanguinary Yankee and the phlegmatic German—become one, and, as represented in the blooded team before me" (waving his hand majestically over the heads of Dennis and Christine), "pull in the traces together, how will the ship of state go forward!" and his face disappeared behind his huge flagon of coffee in the deepest pledge. Bill thought he had uttered a very profound and elegant sentiment, but his speech fell like a bombshell in the little company.
"The very spirit of mischief is abroad to-day," Dennis groaned. And Christine, with a face like a peony, snatched up the youngest little Bruder, saying, "It is time these sleepy children were in bed"; but the doctor and the Leonards went off again and again in uncontrollable fits of laughter, in which Dennis could not refrain from joining, though he wished the unlucky Cronk a thousand miles away. Bill put down his mug, stared around in a surprised and nonplussed manner, and then said, in a loud whisper, "I say, Fleet, was there any hitch in what I said?"
This set them off again, but Dennis answered good-naturedly, slapping his friend on the shoulder, "Cronk, you would make a man laugh in the face of fate."
Bill took this as a compliment, and the strange party, thrown together by an event that mingled all classes in the community, broke up and went their several ways.
CHAPTER L
EVERY BARRIER BURNED AWAY
Dennis was glad to escape, and went to a side door where he could cool his hot cheeks in the night air. He fairly dreaded to meet Christine again, and, even where the wind blew cold upon him, his cheeks grew hotter and hotter, as he remembered what had occurred. He had been there but a little time when a light hand fell on his arm, and he was startled by her voice—"Mr. Fleet, are you very tired?"
"Not in the least," he answered, eagerly.
"You must be: it is wrong for me to think of it."