She paused before Phil, in the semicircle that included Amzi and his sisters with their husbands, and Tom Kirkwood.
"My dear child, on this proud occasion I want to say that the day you fell out of the cherry tree in my back yard and broke your arm and came into the house to get a sand tart as usual before going home, just as though nothing had happened, I loved you and I have loved you ever since. And you didn't cry either!"
"I didn't cry, Aunt Jane, because I hadn't sense enough to know I'd been hurt!"
"You were always a child of spirit! It's spirit that counts in this life. And for all we know in the next one, too. Don't you let all these relations of yours spoil you; I've known all the Montgomerys ever since your great-grandfather came here from Virginia, and you please me more than all the rest of 'em put together. Do you hear that, Amzi!"
Amzi was prepared to hear just this; he was nigh to bursting with pride, for Mrs. King was the great lady of the community and her opinion outweighed that of any dozen other women in that quarter of Indiana.
Montgomery is just a comfortable, folksy, neighborly town, small enough to make hypocrisy difficult and unnecessary. In a company like this that marked Phil's entrance upon the great little world, no real Montgomeryite remembered who had the most money, or the costliest automobile, or the largest house. The Madison professors, who never had any hope of earning more than fifteen hundred dollars a year if they lived forever, received the special consideration to which they were entitled; and Judge Walters might be hated by most of the lawyers at the bar for his sharp admonitions from the bench, but they all respected him for his sound attainments and unquestioned probity. Among others who were presented to Phil (as though they hadn't known her all her life!) were a general and a colonel and other officers of the line, including Captain Joshua Wilson, poet and county recorder, and the editors of the two newspapers, and lawyers and doctors and shopkeepers, and, yes, clerks who stood behind counters, and insurance agents and the postmaster, all mingling together, they and their children, in the most democratic fashion imaginable.
"We're all here," said old General Wilks, who had been a tower of strength in the Army of the Tennessee, "and we're the best people of the best state on earth. I claim the privilege of age, Amzi, to kiss the prettiest girl in Indiana."
Beyond question the arrival of the William Holtons, with their niece and nephew from Indianapolis, caused a stir. They were among the late comers, and the curious were waiting to witness their reception, which proved to be disappointingly undramatic. Their welcome in no wise differed from that accorded to other guests. Every one said that Charles Holton was a handsome fellow, and his sister Ethel a very "nice" though rather an insipid and colorless young woman. It was generally understood that Amzi's sisters had forced his hand. The conservatives were disposed to excuse Amzi for permitting the Holtons to be invited; but they thought the Holtons displayed bad taste in accepting. It was Phil's party, and no Holton had any business to be connected with anything that concerned Phil. And Tom Kirkwood's feelings ought to have been considered, said his old friends.
"You see," Charles Holton remarked to Phil, when he had bowed over her hand with a good deal of manner, "I really did give up that New York trip. I would have come back from China to see you in that gown!"
The musicians (five artists from the capital, and not the drummer and piano-thumper usually considered adequate in Montgomery for fraternity and class functions) now struck up the first number.