It was only a week later that Sarah Lutz came out to spend a few days with Abbie. Her seventy-seven years sat lightly upon Sarah. Her white hair, dressed rather elaborately, held a gayly colored, green jeweled comb in its coils and she had little emerald earrings in her small colorless ears. The natural pink in her cheeks of the early days had been replaced by natural pink from a box, and her small merry eyes behind their shell-rimmed glasses were still bright and twinkling. Her dress was of modern cut, and her dainty high-heeled slippers, by the side of Abbie’s broad and altogether serviceable kids, looked, as they walked through the yard, like gay little yachts towing broad barges into harbor.

The two had just reached the sitting-room when they both jumped at the sharp sound of an auto-horn and looked out to see Katherine in the brilliant roadster turning into the lane road under the Lombardys.

“Honk . . . honk . . . the lark at heaven’s gate sings,” she called out breezily and slipped out of the car to run up to the house, her lithe young body aglow with health and energy.

“No?” she said in mock agitation at the sight of both grandmothers. “Not two old noble ancestors?” Katherine’s reverence for old age was on a precise equality with her general timidity.

She gave them each a hasty peck and took immediate possession of the conversation. “I haven’t seen very much of you lately, Sarah. But Abbie, here, . . . I have been cultivating her acquaintance this summer with malice. And the queer part, Sarah,—is that the little old dear doesn’t have the slightest idea why I have been dropping in so solicitously.”

Sarah laughed good naturedly, and Abbie asked, “Then it wasn’t just because you wanted to see me, Kathie?”

“Oh, no,” she admitted blithely, “it’s all on account of Jimmie.”

“Jimmie?”

“Jimmie Buchanan.”

“Oh, . . .” Abbie remembered. “The young man in John’s law office.”

“ ‘The very same,’ quoth the maiden, ‘as a tear stood in her eye.’ I’ve had a crush on him ever since I first saw him striding along with his little old textbooks across the campus. But I never dated him then. I suppose you can guess why?”

“No.” Abbie Deal and Sarah Lutz gave up immediately, for the answers to Katherine’s conundrums were usually as unique as they were varied.

“Because,” Katherine said, mysteriously, “he was a barb.”

“No,” said Abbie. “Not that bad?” Abbie might not be conversant with half of Katherine’s modern vernacular, but she did know that a barb was a non-fraternity man.

“Now . . . Granny . . . you’re turning on the sarcasm. Don’t you make merry with me. Yes, my loves, a barb, . . . never went into a frat.” It was as though she spoke of Lucifer’s fall or Napoleon’s exile. “He probably washed his own shirts on Saturdays and ate at hamburger joints . . . and here I’m crazy about him. But he won’t have me. I’ve done everything but fling myself on the cement walk in front of Uncle John’s office and yell until he comes out and picks me up. Mother is getting a little discouraged about marrying me to the Prince of Wales. But she is still counting on some one of the Vanderastors . . . and here I am just foolish about Jimmie Buchanan and ready to throw myself at his re-soled Oxfords. He’ll be Governor some day or Secretary of the Exterior. But in the meantime, he’ll marry some neat little Jane that’ll economize and have twins . . .”