"Amy! I'm going to muss you up!" she cried, wheeling round.
"Phil—don't you touch me; don't you dare!"
He backed away and began drawing on his coat, and she abandoned the idea of mussing him to make sure his tie didn't crawl up over his collar. She clasped him tight and kissed him on the mouth.
"What a dear old pal you are, Amy," she said, laying her cheek against his. "Don't you ever think I don't appreciate what you do for me—what you are to me!"
"I guess that's all right, Phil," he said, and turned round to the chiffonier and blew his nose furiously. "Where's Tom?"
"I guess daddy's gone downstairs."
"Well, most of your aunts are on the job somewhere and we'd better go down and start this party. I hear the fiddlers tuning up."
Amzi II had built a big house with a generous hall and large rooms, and it had been a matter of pride with Amzi III to maintain it as it had been, refusing to listen to the advice of his sisters that he shut off part of it. Amzi liked space, and he was not in the least dismayed by problems of housekeeping. In preparing for Phil's party he had had all the white woodwork repainted, and the floors of the drawing- and living-rooms had been polished for dancing.
In Montgomery functions of all sorts begin early. The number of available public vehicles is limited, and by general consent the citizens take turns in the use of them. There hadn't been a party at the Montgomery homestead since the marriage of the last of the Montgomery girls. It was not surprising that to-night many people thought a little mournfully of the marriage of the first! The launching of Phil afforded opportunity for contrasting her with her mother; she was or she was not like Lois; nearly all the old people had an opinion one way or another.
Among the early arrivals was Mrs. John Newman King. Mrs. King, at eighty, held her own as the person of chief social importance in town. The Montgomerys were a good second; but their standing was based merely upon long residence and wealth; whereas Mrs. King had to her credit not only these essential elements of provincial distinction, but she had been the wife of a United States Senator in the great days of the Civil War. She had known Lincoln and all the host of wartime heroes. Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman had been her guests right there in Montgomery—at the big place with the elms and beeches, all looking very much to-day as it did in the stirring sixties. Mrs. King wore a lace cap and very rustling silk, and made pretty little curtsies. She talked politics to gentlemen, and asked women about their babies, and was wholly charming with young girls.