Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/212

202 in a near-by town-hall. She was presiding pretty continually that spring, Katherine told Reba. Liked it, as some other women liked to give dinner-parties, or to shine in the drawing-room.

The Park house was a Liberty-Hall sort of place. Everybody did as he or she pleased. There seemed to be no distinction made, either, between family and guest. Such freedom! Such informality! At first Reba felt frightened by it all, but after her first plunge she discovered to her relief that her silence, behind which she hid her shyness (and with some grace and distinction now) would be less noticeable in such an uproar. It was really necessary for somebody to sit quiet and listen. Saturday night at the Park home was always rather noisy, with a college boy at home, and several of his pals, and "Unexpecteds" (Katherine's expression) dropping in from no one knew where.

Katherine had conducted Reba, upon their arrival, to two of the guest-rooms on the third floor, before she found one unoccupied.

"Tell me if there's anything you want," she had said, as she had left Reba. "And put on the blue-gray dress. Dinner is somewhere around half-past-six or seven. I'll come up for you, and I'm going to have you sit beside the darlingest man alive."

The "darlingest man alive" proved to be Alexander Park, a vague name to Reba, but one often seen in the papers—a banker or lawyer, one of the two, Reba believed—and Katherine's father. After Katherine had placed one of her playful kisses on the end of his nose, just as they were sitting down to dinner about half-past seven, and then twisted the bit of gray hair on top of his head into a funny little peak, so that he looked