“Kathie!” It was both grandmothers, simultaneously.

“Oh . . . very well . . . one at a time if you prefer,” she went on unblushingly.

“He’s a nice boy,” Abbie Deal broke in to avert other verbal catastrophes. “John speaks so highly of him. I’ll invite him out some night to supper when you’re here.”

“Oh, you needn’t bother. I have already. It’s to-night.” She smiled at them cheerfully. “I’m going in to get him at six. You’ll fix a nice little dinner, won’t you, Granny?”

Abbie Deal sat down weakly. Flesh of her flesh was saying that. Blood of her blood was taking the initiative in a love affair. “Oh, Kathie . . . girls are so queer now-days. They do such forward things. It would have been nicer for me to.”

“Girls now-days,” said Miss Deal, “do things immediately . . . right off the bat . . . snap . . . just like that.”

“So I see,” said Abbie Deal dryly.

“Now, here’s the idea,” Kathie went on, unperturbed. “You two old baby-dolls get up a nice little dinner while I go after Jimmie. Then I’ll come home with him and put on a fetching pink apron and set the table and bring in the provender . . . and Jimmie will begin to think I’m the neat little Jane.” She smiled at them with gay nonchalance. She patted them both. She kissed them each a time or two. And they gave in.

“She’s yours, Sarah, as much as she’s mine,” Abbie said, when they were starting the meal, “and I, for one, am ashamed of her.”

“Oh, . . . she’s all right, Abbie. She’s just outspoken.”

“At nineteen, Sarah, I was married, and had Katherine’s father, and had washed and ironed and sewed and made soap and woven rag carpet . . . and . . .”

“Yes . . . but, Abbie, you just couldn’t do anything else. I can think of a dozen things that Kathie could do right now if she set her mind to it.”

They prepared the dinner . . . the two old belles of another generation.

A little after six, Katherine dashed into the lane road at a speed which jangled the nerves of a flock of stolid Plymouth Rock hens, and set the brakes a few inches from a gander that stuck out his neck and expressed disapproval of the blue and white monstrosity.

“Honk honk, yourself,” Katherine called out to the offended dignitary, and then came into the house with a nice-looking, clean-cut young fellow. She came triumphantly. “Well . . . here’s Jimmie. It took handcuffs and an anesthetic to get him but I did the deed. Jimmie, you know Grandmother Deal, . . . but I want to present you to Grandmother Lutz. Grandma . . . Jimmie Buchanan . . . the conquered. Well,” she waved an airy hand at the two old ladies, “how do you like ’em, Jimmie? I could love either . . . ‘were t’other dear charmer away.’ ”