CHAPTER IV.
ANN GOSSAWAY'S RED CLOAK The merrymakings at Yardley continued for weeks, a new impetus and flavor being lent them by the arrival of two of Lucy's friends--her schoolmate and bosom companion, Maria Collins, of Trenton, and Maria's devoted admirer, Max Feilding, of Walnut Hill, Philadelphia.
Jane, in her joy over Lucy's home-coming, and in her desire to meet her sister's every wish, gladly welcomed the new arrivals, although Miss Collins, strange to say, had not made a very good impression upon her.
Max she thought better of.

He was a quiet, well-bred young fellow; older than either Lucy or Maria, and having lived abroad a year, knew something of the outside world.

Moreover, their families had always been intimate in the old days, his ancestral home being always open to Jane's mother when a girl.
The arrival of these two strangers only added to the general gayety.
Picnics were planned to the woods back of Warehold to which the young people of the town were invited, and in which Billy Tatham with his team took a prominent part.

Sailing and fishing parties outside of Barnegat were gotten up; dances were held in the old parlor, and even tableaux were arranged under Max's artistic guidance.

In one of these Maria wore a Spanish costume fashioned out of a white lace shawl belonging to Jane's grand-mother draped over her head and shoulders, and made the more bewitching by a red japonica fixed in her hair, and Lucy appeared as a dairy-maid decked out in one of Martha's caps, altered to fit her shapely head.
The village itself was greatly stirred.
"Have you seen them two fly-up-the-creeks ?" Billy Tatham, the stage-driver, asked of Uncle Ephraim Tipple as he was driving him down to the boat-landing.
"No, what do they look like ?" "The He-one had on a two-inch hat with a green ribbon and wore a white bob-tail coat that 'bout reached to the top o' his pants.