"At first she is sure she has a horrid old engagement for to-morrow night and is so sorry, but another time, perhaps—Ain't it a marvel the crooked tricks that girl had learned in one day! And then she remembers that her engagement is for Tuesday night—what could she have been thinking of!—and come by all means—only too charmed—and how rarely nowadays does one meet one on one's own level of culture, or perhaps that is too awful a word to use—so hackneyed—but anyway he knows what she means, or doesn't he? He does.
"Pretty soon she gets up and goes over to her horse, picking her way daintily in the silly little tan pumps, and seems to be offering the beast something. The stricken man follows her the second he can without being too raw about it, and there is the adorably feminine thing with a big dill pickle, two deviled eggs, and a half of one of these Camelbert cheeses for her horse. Mr. D. has a good masterly laugh at her idea of horse fodder and calls her 'But, my dear child!' and she looks prettily offended and offers this chuck to the horse and he gulps it all down and noses round for more of the same. It was an old horse named Croppy that she'd known from childhood and would eat anything on earth. She rode him up here once and he nabbed a bar of laundry soap off the back porch and chewed the whole thing down with tears of ecstasy in his eyes and frothing at the mouth like a mad dog. Well, so Hetty gives mister man a look of dainty superiority as she flicks crumbs from her white fingers with my real lace handkerchief, and he stops his hearty laughter and just stares, and she says what nonsense to think the poor horses don't like food as well as any one. Them little moments have their effect on a man in a certain condition. He knew there probably wasn't another horse in the world would touch that truck, but he couldn't help feeling a strange new respect for her in addition to that glorious masculine protection she'd had him wallowing in all day.
"The ride home, at least on the part of the Non Plush Ultra cut-ups, was like they had laid a loved one to final rest out there on the lone mountainside. The handsome stranger and Hetty brought up the rear, conversing eagerly about themselves and other serious topics. I believe he give her to understand that he'd been pretty wild at one time in his life and wasn't any too darned well over it yet, but that some good womanly woman who would study his ways could still take him and make a man of him; and her answering that she knew he must have suffered beyond human endurance in that horrible conflict with his lower nature. He said he had.
"Of course the rabid young hoydens up ahead made a feeble effort now and then to carry it off lightly, and from time to time sang 'My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,' or 'Merrily We Roll Along,' with the high, squeaky tenor of Roth Hyde sounding above the others very pretty in the moonlight, but it was poor work as far as these enraged vestals was concerned. If I'd been Hetty and had got a strange box of candy through the mail the next week, directed in a disguised woman's hand, I'd of rushed right off to the police with it, not waiting for any analysis. And she, poor thing, would get so frightened at bad spots, with the fierce old horse bobbing about so dangerous, that she just has to be held on. And once she wrenched her ankle against a horrid old tree on the trail—she hadn't been able to resist a little one—and bit her under lip as the spasm of pain passed over her refined features. But she was all right in a minute and begged Mr. D. not to think of bathing it in cold water because it was nothing—nothing at all, really now—and he would embarrass her frightfully if he said one more word about it. And Mr. D. again remarked that she was feminine to her finger tips, a brave, game little woman, one of the gamest he ever knew. And pretty soon—what was she thinking about now? Why, she was merely wondering if horses think in the true sense of the word or only have animal instinct, as it is called. And wasn't she a strange, puzzling creature to be thinking on deep subjects like that at such a time! Yes, she had been called puzzling as a child, but she didn't like it one bit. She wanted to be like other girls, if he knew what she meant. He seemed to.
"They took Hetty home first on account of her poor little ankle and sung 'Good Night, Ladies,' at the gate. And so ended a day that was wreck and ruin for most of our sex there present.
"And to show you what a good, deep, scientific cause I had discovered, the next night at Hetty's who shows up one by one but these four men about town, each with a pound of mixed from the Bon Ton Handy Kitchen, and there they're all setting at the feet of Hetty, as it were, in her new light summer gown with the blue bows, when Mr. D. blows in with a two-pound box and the novel in which love conquered all. So excited she was when she tells me about it next day. The luck of that girl! But after all it wasn't luck, because she'd laid her foundations the day before, hadn't she? Always look a little bit back of anything that seems to be luck, say I.
"And Hetty with shining eyes entertained one and all with the wit and sparkle a woman can show only when there's four or five men at her at once—it's the only time we ever rise to our best. But she got a chance for a few words alone with Mr. D., who took his hat finally when he sees the other four was going to set him out; enough words to confide to him how she loathed this continual social racket to which she was constantly subjected, with never a let-up so one could get to one's books and to one's real thoughts. But perhaps he would venture up again some time next week or the week after—not getting coarse in her work, understand, even with him flopping around there out on the bank—and he give her one long, meaning look and said why not to-morrow night, and she carelessly said that would be charming, she was sure—she didn't think of any engagement at this minute—and it was ever so nice of him to think of poor little me.
"Then she went back and gave the social evening of their life to them four boys that had stayed. She said she couldn't thank them enough for coming this evening—which is probably the only time she had told the truth in thirty-six hours—and they all made merry. Roth Hyde sang 'Sally in Our Alley' so good on the high notes that the Duttons was all out in the hall listening; and Riley Hardin singing 'Down, Diver, Down, 'Neath the Deep Blue Waves!' and Mac Gordon singing his everlasting German songs in their native language, and Charlie Dickman singing a new sentimental one called 'Ain't There at Least One Gentleman Here?' about a fair young lady dancer being insulted in a gilded café in some large city; and one and all voted it was a jolly evening and said how about coming back to-morrow night, but Hetty said no, it was her one evening for study and she couldn't be bothered with them, which was a plain, downright so-and-so and well she knew it, because that girl's study was over for good and all.
"Well, why string it out? I've give you the facts. And my lands! Will you look at that clock now? Here's the morning gone and this room still looking like the inside of a sheep-herder's wagon! Oh, yes, and when Hetty was up here this time that she wouldn't wear my riding pants down, she says. 'Not only that, but I'm scrupulously careful in all ways. Why, I never even allow dear Burchell to observe me in one of those lace boudoir caps that so many women cover up their hair with when it's their best feature but they won't take time to do it.'
"Now was that spoken like a wise woman or like the two-horned Galumpsis Caladensis of East India, whose habits are little known to man? My Lord! Won't I ever learn to stop? Where did I put that dusting cloth?"