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“But you danced with him,” said the simple Piney, in astonishment.

“But not in his store among his customers,” said Cissy sapiently. “No! we’re going down Main Street past Secamps’. Those Secamp girls are sure to be at their windows, looking out. This hat will just turn ’em green–greener than ever.”

“You’re just horrid, Ciss!” said Piney, with admiration.

“And then,” continued Cissy, “we’ll just sail down past the new block to the parson’s and make a call.”

“Oh, I see,” said Piney archly. “It’ll be just about the time when the new engineer of the mill works has a clean shirt on, and is smoking his cigyar before the office.”

Cissy tossed her hat disdainfully. “Much anybody cares whether he’s there or not! I haven’t forgotten how he showed us over the mill the other day in a pair of overalls, just like a workman.”

“But they say he’s awfully smart and well educated, and needn’t work, and I’m sure it’s very nice of him to dress just like the other men when he’s with ’em,” urged Piney.

“Bah! That was just to show that he didn’t care what we thought of him, he’s that conceited! And it wasn’t respectful, considering one of the directors was there, all dressed up. Don’t tell me! You can see it in his eye, looking you over without blinking and then turning away as if he’d got enough of you. He makes me tired.”

Piney did not reply. The engineer had seemed to her to be a singularly attractive young man, yet she was equally impressed with Cissy’s superior condition, which could find flaws in such perfection. Following her friend down the steps of the veranda, they passed into the staring graveled walk of the new garden, only recently recovered from the wild wood, its accurate diamond and heart shaped beds of vivid green set in white quartz borders giving it the appearance of elaborately iced confectionery. A few steps further brought them to the road and the wooden “sidewalk” to Main Street, which carried civic improvements to the hillside, and Mr. Trixit’s very door. Turning down this thoroughfare, they stopped laughing, and otherwise assumed a conscious half artificial air; for it was the hour when Canada City lounged listlessly before its shops, its saloons, its offices and mills, or even held lazy meetings in the dust of the roadway, and the passage down the principal street of its two prettiest girls was an event to be viewed as if it were a civic procession. Hats flew off as they passed; place was freely given; impeding barrels and sacks were removed from the wooden pavement, and preoccupied indwellers hastily summoned to the front door to do homage to Cissy Trixit and Piney as they went by. Not but that Canada City, in the fierce and unregenerate days of its youth, had seen fairer and higher colored faces, more gayly bedizened, on its thoroughfares, but never anything so fresh and innocent. Men stood there all unconsciously, reverencing their absent mothers, sisters, and daughters, in their spontaneous homage to the pair, and seemed to feel the wholesome breath of their Eastern homes wafted from the freshly ironed skirts of these foolish virgins as they rustled by. I am afraid that neither Cissy nor Piney appreciated this feeling; few women did at that time; indeed, these young ladies assumed a slight air of hauteur.

“Really, they do stare so,” said Cissy, with eyes dilating with pleasurable emotion; “we’ll have to take the back street next time!”

Piney, proud in the glory reflected from Cissy, and in her own, answered, “We will–sure!”

There was only one interruption to this triumphal progress, and that was so slight as to be noticed by only one of the two girls. As they passed the new works at the mill, the new engineer, as Piney had foreseen, was leaning against the doorpost, smoking a pipe. He took his hat from his head and his pipe from his month as they approached, and greeted them with an easy “Good-afternoon,” yet with a glance that was quietly observant and tolerantly critical.