Tom did know where he lived. The old four-story frame building in Whitmanville, the Diamond Building, the highest in the town, had been made famous by his residence. The top floor was said to be his apartment and it was commonly supposed that he kept chickens in it. There were some dreadful stories about midnight dissections, but cooler heads affirmed that if there were any chickens there at all, they were there as the companions and not as the helpless victims of a debauched old age. And now the two social workers were invited into these mysterious precincts! The news might swell the roster to disconcerting proportions. They should have to proceed with caution.

"All we want, sir, is a most elementary discussion. Just enough so we can give the men and women in the Mills some simple facts about themselves. Then, with that as a starter, we can build up more intelligently."

"I shall be glad to give you whatever you want. Shall we say Tuesday next? At eight o'clock? Don't dress, you know. Just come as you are. This is business," and with another of his sly smiles he moved on down the street.

When Tom called for Nancy on Tuesday night he found her equipped with pad and pencils.

"Henry doesn't think too highly of this performance, I may say," she said, smiling up at him, "but we simply couldn't have let people know where we are going. They would have swamped the whole thing. I must say I am a little afraid." She slipped her arm through his, and they hurried on down Division Street, which connects Tutors' Lane with Whitmanville. "If he only has chickens, I won't mind, but if he has bats I shall hate it. I confess I'm a perfect fool about bats. They're loathsome. What they really are, are hairy rats with wings like web feet, and they have the most loathsome mouths."

Tom was curiously excited. He felt buoyed up. It was like water-wings, he told himself. And when he tried afterwards to think of the things he had said, he could remember nothing except that he had quoted Alice's perplexity about bats eating cats when she was falling down the well, and that they had both laughed immoderately.

The Diamond Building, on their arrival, presented a somewhat portentous picture. A Five, Ten, and Fifteen Cent store dimly showed forth strings of penny postal cards and piles of dusty candy in its macabre windows. The second floor was throbbing with the rich life of a poolhall, and as they passed the Christian Science rooms on the third floor they carried with them the strains of a therapeutic hymn. And then, at last, they were before a door which bore over its bell the pencilled legend, H. Sprig.

They were admitted by a flunkey named Herbert. Herbert's period of usefulness in the laboratory had terminated with that of the Professor, and the latter had engaged him as a body servant, not only because of his proved capacity and loyalty, but because of the unusual shape of his head, upon which the Professor found it restful to gaze. He was black, was Herbert, and was at present clothed in gorgeous blue livery with gold buttons. He bowed the guests inside and led them through a narrow hallway to a comfortable room of generous size, the Professor's library. At one end was a long table, and behind it was Mr. Sprig, clad in a morning coat. Behind him on the walls were half a dozen diagrams of Man the Master, designed to gratify students whose thirst was for the anatomical. Before Mr. Sprig were a pitcher of iced water, a tumbler, and a sheaf of notes.

Mr. Sprig rose as Nancy and Tom entered and bowed pleasantly, at the same time waving them to two chairs placed close together before his table. When they had seated themselves he bowed again, and, without more ado, began an address. He spoke in a low, deep, if somewhat quavery voice, and with an elegant ease of manner. It was his purpose, he explained, to give them an elementary course in the primary systems of the body, together with two supplementary lectures on hygiene, in order that they might go out and instruct the poor in the proper care of their bodies. Tonight he would have only time for the respiratory and circulatory systems, next time would come the digestive and excretory tracts, and he hoped to finish in six lectures. It was, of course, a broad subject and much water had passed under the bridge since his day, but with their generous help he hoped that the thing might be done.

He talked for fifty minutes, that being a college period, and at its close he bowed again. He then came from behind the table and shook them warmly by the hand. "You will forgive a foolish old man, I know. You see I haven't given a lecture since I resigned eight years ago, and I thought I'd like to do it up brown. And now, Herbert"—for the elaborate old man had appeared at the close of the lecture—"please bring in the things."

The "things" were some little round cup cakes, three wine glasses, and a large bottle of sauterne.

"The summer we graduated," Mr. Sprig went on, "my classmate Curtis and I went abroad. We took a walking trip south of Bordeaux, and on that walk we discovered this wine. I have kept in touch with the people who make it ever since, and although I shall never get any more, I shall have enough to last me. You must try a glass, Miss Whitman. I assure you it will improve all of your systems!"

When Nancy first looked at her watch it was nearly eleven.

"You mustn't go, of course, until you have seen the chickens," said Mr. Sprig.

The chickens! Under the charm of the softly lighted room, the old gentleman's quiet flow of half-whimsical, half-serious reminiscence, they had been carried back to the rosy days that were before their birth. Now they dreaded lest their host should show himself a little mad, after all.

He lit a bedside candle, and at his request they followed him out upon a sun parlour. And there, indeed, was a wire-enclosed runaway with a white-washed shelf at the end supporting four sleeping forms. The candle moved nearer, and there they were—beyond any possible doubt, Plymouth Rocks.

To see them at night was a nice problem, he explained. Being a little light-minded about sunshine, it seemed that they were unable to discriminate between heaven's high lamp and the electric one on the porch, and would dutifully arise when either appeared. Once down from their perch, they would refuse to return until the sun was removed; and when it chanced to be the one on the porch and was switched off, they were unable to return because their endowment of optic nerve was small and their homing instinct, so strong in bees and eagles, smaller. There was created, accordingly, an impasse, but Mr. Sprig, who knew his hens, circumvented it. He lit a bedside candle which merely troubled his friends' sleep.

"The one on the extreme left is Helen of Troy. She is a stunning creature, as you can see. She produced an egg for me only this morning. Next is Malvolio. I confess I am partial to him. Then comes Little Nell. She is extremely demure and inclined to be sentimental. And last is Carol Kennicott, who chatters so much I am afraid I shall shortly have to pop her into a pie." He gazed at her affectionately. "Well," he continued as he led the way back into his library, "I have now shown you my treasures. They, of course, seem a little crazy to you, and I hope your lives will end so fully that you won't have to fall back on them. But in case either of you should find yourself old and foolish and alone, I can recommend them as pleasant and amiable companions. You will find them curiously simple—they are not offended if you don't call upon them or write them letters,—and then from time to time they yield up to you the shining miracle of an egg, for which they ask no recompense; and when they come to lay down their lives they do it with a gesture and make the day a feast."

He was standing before the dying fire, surrounded by its genial light, as his guests withdrew. Near him, just touched by the firelight, were the crumbs of their supper and the stately old bottle which had given its bouquet to the room. Old Herbert, moving out of the shadow noiselessly and pleasantly, bowed them out, and as the vision faded one of the guests, at least, pictured the four friends on the sun porch readjusting themselves, after their fitful fever, to the gentle life of their home.



VIII

The following Thursday night Tom called at the Whitmans' to rehearse the lecture. Nancy's cousin Bob had arranged to have two rooms reserved for them during the Friday noon hour at the Mills, and they had agreed that the best way to prepare for the ordeal was to study their notes and get their material in final shape and then have a dress rehearsal on Thursday night. "After a while," Nancy had said, "when we work into the harness, we probably won't need to have one, but I don't think we can be too careful of this first lecture." This had been precisely Tom's opinion also.

Tom had never seen Henry so amiable. In fact he seemed hard put to it to keep from unrestrained merriment, and Tom, who found the affair more alarming as it progressed, would have preferred avoiding him altogether. He knew that Henry was calling him callow, a lightweight, charges well-nigh proved by his present undertaking, and to save himself from rout he had to remember that Henry was a heavy Grave man and that his own participation was only a question of common courtesy to a lady, anyway. Nancy had set her heart upon the thing, and he would be a very indifferent friend to stand idly by and not lift a finger to help.

"I believe," said Henry, "that we are to sit in the drawing-room. Nancy will stand in the far end of the library."

"I see," replied Tom vaguely.

"She feels that having the conditions rather trying tonight will help her tomorrow. Accordingly, she's going to speak first, and she wants me to excuse her for not being here when you arrived. By coming in formally and beginning her address without speaking to us, she hopes to get some of the feeling of the way it will be tomorrow." And with a somewhat hysterical noise he went to the stairway. "All right, Nancy."

In a minute Nancy appeared on the stairs and, walking stiffly across into the library, she climbed upon a footstool at the far end. In front of her was an old violin stand. Upon it she put her notes. She then raised her face; and even at the distance it appeared flushed.

"Fellow workers," she began.

At this point Henry broke into uncontrollable laughter. "Excuse me, really, but it is too much. 'Fellow workers'—oh, dear me. Oh, oh, I am afraid I can't stand it. You must excuse me, really. Oh, dear me," and rising weakly, handkerchief in hand, he tottered from the room.

Nancy, the picture of resigned despair, gazed at Tom. He felt slightly hysterical himself.

"What are we to do?" she asked helplessly. As they were nearly fifty feet apart, the pitch of her voice was necessarily above that used in ordinary conversation and gave to her words considerable melodramatic force. A fresh shout of laughter descending from the stairs made the situation none the easier.

Nancy was, indeed, thoroughly upset. What was to become of her independent life if this failed? How else could she express herself? Was it to collapse at the very start, before she could even approach her dreams for the future? To have it end ridiculously, to have her become a laughing stock, would be too cruel. No, she would fight for her liberty.

"Why, the thing to do is to go on," replied Tom. Had those words been said at Marengo or Poitiers or Persepolis, they might today be learned by school children. They were of the stuff that wins lost causes. They stem defeat as effectively as fresh battalions.

"Fellow workers," Nancy began again, and this time there was only respectful silence, "I have come to you today to tell you a little something about the machines which are forever your property, which were given to you by your Maker and which it is your sacred duty to keep in as good condition as possible. I mean your own bodies." She paused, and Tom nodded encouragement from the other room. "It has become my pleasant duty to come to you and tell you how you may keep these God-given machines. You are to regard me, in other words, as your friend and sister." The lecturer was here threatened by a dry, pippy, cough and the whole course was imperilled. However, she drove fiercely on.

"At the outset you should have a brief working knowledge of such things as your heart and lungs, your pancreas, liver, big and little intestines and their juices; and I shall, accordingly, give you a brief idea of the various systems, beginning today with the circulatory and respiratory. Next time I shall hope to cover the digestive and excretory tracts, and I shall close with two talks on personal hygiene." This ended the preliminary matter, and the lecturer proceeded with the body of her talk in a somewhat more mechanical style. The respiratory system was dismissed in six minutes, although, in some curious way, Mr. Sprig had strung the same material out to half an hour.

Before beginning upon the circulatory system, however, she sprang a surprise. "For your convenience," she explained, "I shall draw a diagram of the heart and its valves, and with your assistance I shall explain its action." After a little wrestling with the diagram, which would curl, she managed to pin it to the wall. She then proceeded, in red crayon, to draw a fully equipped heart. She finished with audible relief and, turning triumphantly—greeted Miss Balch and her brother Leofwin.

"Dear me, I am afraid we are intruding," said Miss Balch, looking around with ingenuous charm.

Henry, having heard the bell which the social workers had been too absorbed to hear, appeared at the door and relieved the situation temporarily. Leofwin, however, whose eye was naturally caught by the pictorial, was gazing at the circulatory system on the wall. "What on earth is that?" he asked, with more curiosity than was perhaps excusable. "It looks for all the world like some sort of impressionistic valentine."

Nancy, for one reckless moment, was tempted to say that it was, but temperate judgment prevailed. After all, why need she be ashamed of what they were doing?

"Tom and I are giving a course of lectures at the Mill, in hygiene, and we are just rehearsing a little; that's all. The valentine shows the heart action. Those arm things are the valves, you see."

"But, really, you know, even a valve must have some perspective."

"Well, of course, I'm no artist. The cut in the dictionary was very small, and when I enlarged it I tried to get the right proportions, but I just had my tape measure and——"

"I shall help you. Elfrida will bear me out: I have always been interested in the lower classes, and I shall love to go with you and draw it when the time comes."

"Oh, I couldn't let you do that."

"Why not? I admit I've had no experience, but, after all, in a work of this kind, it is the spirit that counts, isn't it?"

Elfrida had engaged Tom and Henry at a point as far distant as she could from her brother and Nancy, and she now asked Tom what he thought of Somebody's latest novel and made him lose track of their conversation.

"Are you really a realist?" asked Miss Balch.

"No, I don't think I am."

"Fancy," replied Miss Balch. "Then I think you would like a thing I got out of the library the other day by one of these new Russians. He has some dreadful name. Well, it is about this man, a peasant, who falls in love with this Bolshevist agent, and she uses the man, you see, as a tool. Then there is this other woman in it who——"

Leofwin had adopted a very free-and-easy manner, it seemed to Tom. He was sitting with his legs crossed, hands folded, one arm over the back of his chair, half facing Nancy. He was being extremely bland and at his ease. It was the sort of thing one might do in a Russian drawing-room, perhaps, where the ladies doubtless didn't mind being bitten in a fit of passion, but it was decidedly not the way to behave in Woodbridge—although it must be confessed that an impartial observer might have failed to distinguish any marked difference in the way Tom himself was sitting, since he, too, had crossed his legs, folded his hands, and was half facing Nancy. It was clear that Nancy was painfully trying to do the honours. "You must let me see your pictures," Tom heard her say.

"... Really, Mr. Reynolds, I think you might listen to me when I'm trying so hard to entertain you."

"Why, I heard everything you said. All about this new Russian."

"Sly boots!" said Miss Balch archly.

Tom wondered what the proper reply was. What he wanted to say, in the same arch manner was "Puss Wuss!" but instead he just grinned brightly and let it be inferred that he was thinking of all sorts of clever things.

"A penny for your thoughts, sir," cried Miss Balch.

This was unbearable, especially since Henry was apparently enjoying it so much.

"I hope you won't think me rude, but I was thinking of the great pile of uncorrected test papers at home on my desk, and I am afraid you will have to excuse me." He rose. The whole room rose.

He started for the door, and Nancy hurried over to him. "Isn't it dreadful?" she seemed to say. Behind her, like Tartarin's camel, loomed Leofwin.

"We'll meet here at twelve," Nancy said, and with an effort she managed to include the cavalier and irrepressible artist, who, beaming and bowing, showed in every corner of him his thorough approval of the whole arrangement.



IX

By a coincidence, the two men arrived at ten minutes to twelve. They found Nancy in a rather pathetic state of excitement. She had been running up and down stairs and from one room to another and she met them with the elaborate calm of one about to give himself up to a capital operation.

"We have a nice day for it, anyway," she said bravely. Any agreeable condition, however remote it might at first appear from the business at hand, was welcome. "Tell me," she asked Tom, "do you think I'm dressed suitably?"

"Perfectly."

"Some social workers go down in the slums in the worst old clothes they can find, but I've heard that the people down there like to see nice things, so I compromised. This is just a gingham dress, you see, but I'm wearing my pearls."

"I should think that's just right. Didn't Henry, the Labour expert, help you?"

"Oh, I didn't bother him. He's not interested, you see."

Leofwin, who had been fidgeting around for an opening, now burst forth. "I came early," he said, "to find out if I can't do the lungs too; I've been practising them along with the heart, you know, and I think it might go well dashing them in somewhere. What?" Leofwin's "what's" were noteworthy. They were in a higher key than the rest of his conversation, which was itself high, and he drew them out to almost exquisite lengths. They were nearly all that was left of his week-end with the patron in Suffolk.

"Oh, dear me, no," replied Nancy with considerable spirit.

"I think you will like my heart," he continued undismayed. "I've been doing them all morning. I dug up some priceless old Beaux Arts crayons. It will be nice when we get to the brain. It's awfully romantic, I find," and he gave Nancy a killing smile. She gazed at him placidly and then turned to Tom. "What time is it?" she asked.

"Nearly twelve."

At this point Edmund drove up, and with renewed palpitations the party proceeded to the Mill.

As they passed in through the gates Tom noticed with sickening dread a huge sign in flaming letters, "ARE YOU PHYSICALLY FIT? Mr. Reynolds of Woodbridge Will Address You——" They were met by Bob Whitman, a hearty young man who had just been made an officer of the Company. He stared at Leofwin in amused bewilderment.

"Mr. Balch is helping me with the diagrams," explained Nancy. "And now where do we go?"

"Well, you'd better just sit here for a minute or two until they get settled with their lunches. I'll take you to where you go; and what's more, Nancy, I'll introduce you!" Nancy received the word "introduce" as a surgical case receives the initial injection of morphine. The first step had been taken, and nothing could save her. "As for you, Tom, your lecture room's over there, and I'll get the foreman to introduce you."

"Don't think of it," said Tom quickly, "I'll just introduce myself; get to be one of them, you know what I mean. Just one of the boys."

"Well, Miss Whitman, let's you and I get to be just one of the girls," tittered Leofwin.

"I think we might as well go in," said Nancy without noticing Leofwin's jest, which appeared singularly hollow.

"You're sure you don't want some one to start you off, Tom?" asked Bob.

Tom was certain of it; and before entering his room, he waited until Nancy's party had disappeared around the corner. He then opened the door and, going over to a man who was ruminating vacantly upon a huge chunk of bread, sat down. "There's going to be some sort of lecture here, today, isn't there?" he asked.

"I dunno," replied the man.

"Yeah, there is," spoke up a hand nearby. "I seen it on a sign this morning. Some guy from the college."

"That's what I thought," said Tom. "I thought I'd just come in and see what he had to say. Can't stay very long, though," he added, looking at his watch. Then after a pause, "Pretty nice place you got here."

"Oh, it's good enough, I guess."

The room was a large one, filled with three or four dozen tables bearing complicated-looking machinery. There were twenty or thirty men sitting around solemnly chewing their food.

"Pretty slow now, isn't it?" asked Tom.

"Yeah, they laid off about a hundred last week."

"This laying-off stuff would have gone bigger a couple of years ago—in the army—wouldn't it?"

"I'll say it would."

"Have a cigarette?" said Tom. "What outfit were you in?"

The prospect of free cigarettes and army talk, which already in less than three years had taken on a romantic glow, attracted the other men, who, as they finished their lunches, came up and joined the circle. Tom was holding forth in the centre; and when Bob Whitman glanced in on his way home he could see that Tom, by making his talk informal, was getting it across in great style.

Once, during the conversation, Providence seemed to offer an opportunity of bringing in his lecture in such a way that no one would guess he was giving it.

His conscience bothered him a little, and he plunged ahead. One of the men told how his bunkie at Base Six in Bordeaux had died of heart failure when under ether. In a somewhat parched voice Tom started to explain how this could come about, but in no time he was talking gibberish. "The aorta," he heard himself saying, "is the big main artery which comes out of one of the ventricles," and then he noticed the dazed look on the men's faces and, floundering hopelessly, managed to laugh it off. Well, he had tried to talk to them, anyway, and by consulting his watch he found that half an hour had gone by.

After his third cigarette—he had come plentifully supplied—he looked at his watch again. He could go at last! It was ten minutes to one, and Nancy had probably finished long ago. "Apparently this guy isn't coming today. I've got to run along. Well, I've enjoyed this talk a lot," and with an inclusive smile and wave of the hand he went.

Nancy wasn't back in the car, and starting off in the direction they had taken, he soon came to her room. There must have been a hundred women in it and it was Leofwin, not Nancy, who was talking to them.

Tom opened the door quietly and sat down on a stool in the rear. Nancy, pale and helpless, was sitting on one side of a resplendent circulatory system drawn to illustrate the subtleties of the designer's art.

"You will observe, ladies," Leofwin was saying in his purest Suffolk manner, "that shading is done with the crayon well back, like this." He made a few swift lines on the corner of the System and looked up with his bright, inquisitive smile. "Now are there any questions?" There was a stony silence, amid which the one o'clock whistle blew.

The foreman, left in charge by Bob, rose. "I'm sorry, Miss Whitman, but I'm afraid we'll have to stop today."

The worker's friend and sister bowed to him and, clutching her notes and her bag, with firmly set lips and eyes fixed, marched to the door. Leofwin followed, bowing pleasantly right and left, to the intense gratification of his audience, and the trio retired.

"Jolly, wasn't it?" said Leofwin. "I'm sorry, though, we couldn't have had more time. I didn't get to foreshortening at all. However, I think I probably helped them a good deal. Sometime I'd like to tell them about etching, you know, and aqua—and mezzotints."

Nancy received her assistant's remarks in complete silence. She was even unable to do more than nod a good-bye to him. But she shook Tom's hand in parting, and, with an air that might augur the worst, she asked him to come and see her on the next afternoon.

Nancy was particularly charming, Tom thought when he was again with her, and what was even more to the point, he found that they were to be alone. She got his tea ready without difficulty—he was flattered that she remembered his formula—and they settled back for a good talk and laugh.

"I wasn't civil to him, but I really don't care! Did you ever know a more dreadful person?"

"Never. He's awful. But, tell me, how did it go until he took charge?"

"Why, not so badly. But, oh, Tom I heard about you!"

Tom flushed. "What did you hear?"

"Well, Bob was here last night and he said he saw you through the window. He told us how you got them all around you and how you might have been talking about anything." She was wholly admiring.

"Oh, I just talked to them," he said. "I never could have gotten away with anything formal."

"Isn't it funny? I used to think that teaching must be the easiest thing in the world. I used to imagine myself lecturing to the whole college, but I can appreciate now what you and Henry are doing."

Tom was anxious to have the conversation move upon firmer ground. He was also in the dark as to what the next move in the campaign was to be.

Was it to be abandoned, or were they to try and carry on? The latter possibility seemed too fearful. How could he go into that room again? But one must proceed cautiously. It would never do, for example, to come out and treat the whole thing as a distinctly juvenile performance, something they had quite outgrown, until it was clear that they had outgrown it. Again, now was not the time to explain the real nature of his lecture. He could do that when the whole thing had become an amusing memory. "What are we going to do about Mr. Sprig?" asked Tom vaguely.

"You mean are we going to keep on with the lectures?"

"Well, yes."

"What do you think? Last night I was so sick about the whole thing that I was ready to give it all up, but now I wonder if it isn't our duty to give it one more trial." Her words were disappointing, but the dispirited tone in which she said them was cheering, and Tom made so bold as to sing the lately revived "Duty, duty must be done, the rule applies to everyone, and painful though the duty be, to shirk the task were fiddle-dee-dee..."; a happy impulse, for when Henry arrived from his five o'clock he found Tom at the piano and Nancy sitting by him, the one in the role of the Mikado of Japan and the other as his daughter-in-law-elect.

When, however, on the following Tuesday they again climbed down from the fourth floor of the Whitman building, the light had indeed gone out of the undertaking. Mr. Sprig's subject, the digestive and excretory tracts, had not been a propitious one for so critical a time. Leofwin, who had invited himself along, had been captivated by the decorative possibilities of the alimentary canal and had led the discussion following the lecture with a vigour and thoroughness trying for those unfamiliar with an artist's training. "Don't you think it might be fun to trace something all the way from the initial bite down?" he asked. "Let's take an olive, a green olive. 'Back to Nature by A. Green Olive: A Drama in Six Acts and any Number of Scenes.'"

Tom was looking intently at the diagrams on the walls. At musical comedies and the movies, when embarrassing situations arose, one was, in a measure, prepared. The darkness, too, helped, and one could stare straight ahead until the relief, which was rarely long in coming, arrived. There was, finally, the comfort of numbers. But now they were only two—the artist and the scientist being immune to shame. It was, furthermore, extremely bright, everybody was out in the open, and although the amateurs had come prepared for a momentary brush with a bowel or two, they had no reason to expect a prolonged causerie upon even more intimate matters. Tom was, accordingly, hot with embarrassment, and he had reason to believe that Nancy was also.

As Leofwin rattled on, with frankness ever more Elizabethan, Tom glanced at Nancy. She was examining the point of her pencil with as elaborate an interest as he had ever seen shown in any object. It seemed an altogether remarkable affair; but then, apparently, so was the eraser. They were complementary. A line could be made by the point, a delicate, straight line; and then, reversing the pencil, the line could be taken out by the eraser. The thing was complete.

Tom became angry. What right had that great calf to subject Nancy to such an ordeal? He turned to her and said without lowering his voice, "This is rather dull, don't you think? Let's go out and see the hens."

They went out, but couldn't very well see the hens, since they had no candle and were above deceiving them with the porch light. Accordingly, they stepped back into the little hallway that led to the library. To go on into the library was to expose themselves again to the mortification of the physiological vagaries of Leofwin. So they just stood in the little hallway. And then, they laughed.

The relief of a thunderstorm on a stifling day is proverbial, as is the relief of finding one's handkerchief just before one sneezes; but what are these compared with the flooding joy that comes with release from an embarrassing situation with a young lady? The effect upon Tom was to make him excited; more so, perhaps, than he had ever been. It was the same swelling, throbbing excitement he had felt when, waiting in his room on the afternoon of his Election Day, he realized by the shouting of the crowd below that his election was coming.

Nancy was really wonderful. From being curious about her, he had been swept into the Problem of Living with which he had found her somewhat pathetically struggling. It had absorbed him in the brief time that he had encountered it; and now that her first attempt at a solution had ended in ridiculous failure, she immediately rose above it in laughter!

And how happy was the cause of their laughter, after all. An experience such as the one they had just come through must make or break a friendship. Their relationship could not remain the same; and with their laughter they had sealed the new bond.

They said little as they strolled home, alone, in the clear night. It had in it the first suggestion of spring; and neither, apparently, found need to hurry.

"Bob will have to straighten it out at the Mill," said Nancy, "and I shall write Mr. Sprig. I think we ought to send him something, don't you?"

They had come to the Whitman gate. It was a high wooden structure, connected at the top, and in the spring it was covered with roses. The fanlight in the old doorway shone down the brick walk and touched Nancy's hair.

"Of course we must."

They shook hands and bade each other good night. And then, as Nancy turned from him and went up the lighted walk and into the house, Tom knew without any particular surprise and quite without a rising temperature, that he loved her.



X

Nancy emerged from her social service work with the feeling that she had added several chapters to the store of her experience. The sheep-like expression that covered the composite face of her group had brought home to her the ineffectiveness of her plan. One couldn't, it was clear, go down among the masses, no matter how thoughtfully dressed, with only an equipment of good will, and hope to do them much good. Nor was she, she now suspected, the person to attempt such a career. She fancied she saw inherent weaknesses in her character which would preclude a successful performance. She had been frightened, rather than inspired, by the women in that room, particularly by the women of her own age. "What right have you to come down here with your pearls and your simple gingham dress," she felt they were asking, "and get off a lot of this college stuff to us?" What right indeed? She was convinced, in short, that she had been embarked upon a hopeless piece of snobbery, and, finding the whole business distasteful, it had not been difficult to discover her unfitness.

The time had not been wasted, however. Not only had she satisfied herself that a career of Uplift was not for her, but she had made a friend into the bargain. Tom, she decided, had behaved beautifully through it; and in her humbled state of mind the offence she had taken at his acting in the charade became all the more odious. What a mean-minded girl she could be, to be sure; yet how perfectly he had risen above the situation. He had received her rudeness with an instinctive fineness that gave freshness to the Biblical admonition about the other cheek. He had returned good for evil, and in supporting her through the ordeal of the Uplift Plan he had proved himself a tower of strength.

Tom and she, a few days after the final lecture, had gone together to the college book shop and picked out their present for Professor Sprig. They had dawdled over the shelves, pulling down a book here and another there, meeting every few minutes to show each other a possibility, and then putting it back. The thing could, of course, have been done much more quickly, but neither seemed in a hurry to find the right one, for they both liked books, and the shop was well-stocked, and the clerks did not descend like buzzards upon them. They at length selected a rag-paper, wide-margined copy of Calverley's Verses and Fly Leaves and laughed at its inappropriateness for the physiologist. Still, they were confident enough that Mr. Sprig knew his Calverley quite as well as they, and that another copy would not be a burden. It had been a delightful two hours, and Nancy, at dinner, began a detailed account of it.

But Henry was not interested. "It seems to me that you are seeing a good deal of Tom Reynolds, lately," was all that he said.

And why shouldn't she see a good deal of Tom Reynolds? she asked herself. There was that in Henry's tone which opened up the old-time anger. Here he was, questioning her again, this time questioning her friends. He was questioning Tom!

Had Henry wished to further the young man's chances with his sister to the best of his ability, he could not have chosen a more effective method. Tom, who had been doing very well on his own account, was now made doubly romantic through persecution. Nor do I think Nancy should be condemned as over-sentimental for feeling so, for if the reader—who cannot conceivably be thought over-sentimental—examine his own experience, I dare say he will find a parallel. In any event, Nancy was in a fair way to discover a tender interest in Tom, if, indeed, she had not already done so.

But in the meantime, she must be true to herself and live richly. She had not yet determined what her new work would be, nor should she determine what it would be until she had considered the matter more dispassionately than she had the last one. Until the right thing was apparent, therefore, she would devote herself with more assiduity to the physical, mental, and spiritual progress of her nephew. After all, what finer work could there be than the rearing of a first-class American youth?

Henry had sent his son to Miss West's kindergarten when he was scarcely four. Harry had not done well at the various cutting and pasting exercises, but he had been somewhat precocious at reading and was already advanced into the third reader. His orthographic sense, however, had not yet unbudded, and it was to the gentle fostering of this, in particular, that Nancy now committed herself. She also thought it high time that his musical education should commence, and the services of Miss Marbury were invoked. Harry, unlike the general run of his fellows, was wholly charmed with the prospect of playing, and the old piano was assailed with a diligence reminiscent of the youthful Haendel. So it happened that Harry was practising in mid-afternoon on the day when Leofwin Balch called, something over a week after the debacle of Nancy's social service career.

Nancy, too, was at home and was much surprised and annoyed when her late assistant appeared. Not the least surprising feature of his call was his costume. Usually clad with a conspicuous and artistic carelessness, he was today arrayed like the lilies of the field. He was wearing a morning coat, faultlessly pressed, and in its buttonhole bloomed a gardenia. He carried a stick with a gold band around it, his spats were of a light and wonderful tan, and in his hand, in place of the usual greenish-brown veteran, he held a grey fedora of precisely the shape and shade worn by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, on the occasion of that happiest of events, his recent visit to our country.

"I learned from your chauffeur that you were at home," said Leofwin, smiling graciously, "but I had no way of knowing that you were alone."

He had actually been spying on her! "Why didn't you call up one of the maids?" replied Nancy with more asperity than was perhaps becoming in a hostess.

"Delightful picture," laughed Leofwin, "but as a matter of fact you see I don't know any of them, what?" and he nodded pleasantly.

Harry, who had progressed to the D scale at his second and latest lesson, was going over it with all the ardour of first love, and contributed a tinkly-winkly background which was vaguely disturbing. It was not near enough, however, to be quite recognizable, and Leofwin carried on without comment, supposing it to be a kind of funny clock, or something.

"I called," he continued, "at this odd hour in the hope that I might find out how you are after our recent attempt to improve the lower classes." He drew his chair up nearer to Nancy as he spoke, and there was a tenderness in his tone that alarmed her, particularly in the way he emphasized "our."

"I am quite well, thank you."

"Oh, but I am glad to hear it," he said.

The fervour of his words was nonsensical, but his intention, alas, was becoming clear.

"If you will forgive me," he continued, "I shall begin at once upon the business at hand. We artists, you know, are sometimes accused of being unbusinesslike. Goodness only knows, I am a mere child at stocks and bonds and par and all those things, but the underlying essence of business I rather fancy I have—that is, quickness of perception. Now I quickly perceive that we are likely to be interrupted here at almost any minute." He paused and looked about a little wildly. "I do wish we might have a more secluded nook for our talk." Nancy, however, who was now prepared for the worst, did not offer more seclusion and her lover continued. "I wish we had some grotto where I could lead you. I would have it on the Libyan shore. Overhead would be the azure sky. Before us, stealing up the golden beach, would be the Mediterranean. What a colourful scene! Soft breezes would lull you to my mood, and on their spicy-laden breath would come the notes of faery music."

While preparing for this call Leofwin had laboured over that conceit with all the diligence at his command; perhaps too diligently, for even he, had he not been blinded by zeal, might have seen that it was something too ornate to appeal to a rather practical young lady of twenty-five. It was much too ornate, that is certain; and it alone would have made him absurd had not fate joined forces against him and at precisely this point prompted Harry, who was for once impatient with his progress, to try to reproduce the larger music coursing through his soul. This he did by striking out wildly upon the keys in all directions; and at the same time the faithful Clarence, slumberingly waiting for his master's return to earthly matters, burst into full cry.

"Good gracious, what is that?" cried Leofwin.

Nancy sped to the door of the music room, while strange and crashing harmonies rang through the house. "Stop, Harry. Stop that dreadful noise. You mustn't do that. Some one is calling on me. I think you had better go out and play, anyway."

"Oh, please, Auntie, please let me play the scales some more. Just for fifteen minutes."

It would have taken a heart of flint to withstand such pleading. Nancy left the musician and went boldly back to her visitor.

Leofwin was plainly annoyed by the interruption. He should now have to start all over again, and starting was difficult. As Nancy reappeared, however, the clouds rolled from his brow.

"Is everything quite all right?" he asked solicitously.

"Quite all right, thank you."

"Well, in speaking just now of the Libyan grotto, I think I probably suggested the theme of my visit to you this afternoon. I confess, I am a passionate man. Things of the senses appeal to me more than to most; it is, of course, the artist within me. I am like a mountain torrent or the beetling crest of an ocean comber rushing, full-bodied, down upon—upon—the floor." He came to a full stop and stared with pursed lips at the object of his love, sitting unhappily before him. What the devil do mountain torrents and ocean combers rush down upon? Nothing as domestic, surely, as a floor. The thing was unhappily met.

"Please, Mr. Balch," said Nancy, rising, "please don't go any further. I really can't listen to you."

"Nancy," he cried, attempting to seize her hand. "I must call you 'Nancy.' I must call you more than that. With you by my side there will be nothing I cannot do. I shall make your name ring down the ages—like Madame Recamier, or—or, Mona Lisa. I already have planned a piece for us. You are to be Miranda, and I shall be Ferdinand. You are just emerging from your bath, and I am peering through the bushes at you——"

The picture was such a dreadful one that Nancy could endure the situation no longer. From being anxious to let him down as easily as possible—for he was, after all, paying her a compliment—she wished the scene over at any cost. He was making the most holy of moments a travesty. She felt amazingly self-possessed.

"I appreciate the honour of your intention, Mr. Balch"—the language was that of Jane Austen, whom she had just been reading—"but I cannot allow it to go on. In fact," she hastened to add, for he showed signs of going on, "I shall have to ask you to go."

The D scale, laboriously achieved, floated in from the music room. Leofwin turned away and Nancy, standing aside for him, was dismayed to note that his little eyes were filled with sorrow and disappointment.

"It is true," he said, "that I have for some time wanted you for myself, but of late another reason has been urging me on. If it hadn't been for it, I don't think I could have come to you. You see, it is my sister. She has set her heart upon a trip abroad; not an ordinary touristy trip, you know, but a real one—to Italy. We have now only enough money for one to go—I gladly resigned it to her—but she does not feel that she can leave me alone. If only you could have—but there, my dear, I'll not go on."

Nancy was a little disconcerted by this sudden turn. The situation had become almost impersonal. "I'm sorry," she said. She wished that she could have thought of a better remark—a better one came in the night, when she was going over the whole affair—but he seemed grateful even for that.

"Thank you," he said. "But Elfrida will be so disappointed. You simply can't imagine how this will spoil all her plans. But perhaps you will let me try again some time?"

Harry was following his right hand with his left, an octave lower, with almost no success.

"No, I am afraid not," said Nancy as they stood in the doorway. She softened her words, however, by holding out her hand.

"Good-bye," he replied, gently taking it; and then, following the Continental custom, he stooped and kissed it, much to the amusement of two undergraduates who were at the time passing down Tutors' Lane.



XI

On the morning following the final lecture Tom woke early, and his mind flew to the miracle of the preceding night. He was now ablaze with Nancy! It was a dazzling business, but when had it happened? It had not been as though he had gazed too boldly into the sun and had fallen down, blinded by the light of it. It had, to date, been altogether painless. He had seen Nancy in various situations, some of them pleasant, some of them trying. He had liked the way she had met them; and then it dawned upon him that her behaviour was consistently good; and next he knew that it would always be so. This was a stupendous discovery, the more so since he was not aware of any such consistency in his own character. Had he not learned in elementary physics that unlike poles attract one another? He could even now picture a diagram in the book showing the hearty plus pole in happy affinity with the retiring minus pole, a figure which proved the thing beyond a doubt. Science, when made to serve as handmaiden to the arts, has its uses, after all, and Tom took comfort in its present service.

Still, Nancy wasn't "cut and dried"; it would be a grave injustice to imagine her so. She was consistent in an ever new and charming way; she never obtruded her consistency. One would almost certainly never be bored with her; and yet one could depend upon her through thick and thin. He thought of the way the crew on a ferry boat throw their ropes over the great piles as they make fast in the slip. Nancy was such a pile—but what an odious figure! He thought of her face as he had first seen it on the night of the Vernal, when, slightly flushed and smilingly expectant, she had peered into the costume closet. A couplet floated out of Freshman English into his mind—something about a countenance which had in it sweet records and promises as sweet. He jumped out of bed to verify it, and found:

"A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet."

He read on:

"A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food, For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles."

There was one more verse, and the last two couplets covered everything.

"A perfect Woman, nobly planned To warm, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of an angel-light."

He turned the book down, open at this point, and resolved to memorize those lines.

His youth and playtime had now left him for good. The time for half-hearted or three-quarters-hearted attempts to forge ahead were over. He had pledged his heart and shortly hoped to pledge his hand in the service of the loveliest young lady in the world, none less. At present he was only a young instructor; of promise, perhaps, but still unproved. The immediate goal in his academic career was an Assistant Professorship; and although, even under the most favourable circumstances, it would probably be a matter of at least three years before he got it, nevertheless he could at least make it plain that he was indubitably on the way to it, and that (giddy thought) he was even of the stuff that Full Professors are made on! And no time should be lost before this were shown. Dressing feverishly, he corrected some slightly overdue test papers; and when he appeared at breakfast his landlady's three other guests noted the spirit in his bearing and commented upon it when he left.

There was to be a meeting of the Freshman English Department in the afternoon, and Tom found himself looking eagerly forward to it. He had no idea of the business that was coming up, but he was going to be extremely keen-eyed and watchful about it, whatever it was. The little slump which he had allowed to creep into his work recently was over. He wondered if any of his colleagues had noticed it, and in particular he wondered if Professor Dawson, Head of the Department, had noticed it.

Professor Dawson was Tom's beau ideal of all that a university instructor should be. Tom had had him when in college, had taken everything that he taught; and he looked back upon the hours spent at his feet as among the best of his whole life. To teach like that was to be doing something indeed; and it was the picture of himself giving formal lectures in the Dawsonian manner that had finally led him into teaching. That Tom should have imitated as best he could the Dawsonian manner and method was, therefore, inevitable, but it none the less exposed him to the smiles of the Department. A member of it, a Professor Furbush, found occasion to refer to the Johnsonian anecdote anent sprats talking like whales; and, Tom hearing of it, there was brought into being one of the enmities which add zest to collegiate existence. Professor Dawson was a young man to be so celebrated, being only some fifteen years older than Tom himself. He was, of course, a Full Professor—the only Full Professor in Freshman English.

Next in rank to him in the Department was Mr. Brainerd, a gentleman who was nearly as much Professor Dawson's senior as Dawson was Tom's. Mr. Brainerd was, however, only an Assistant Professor, and it was now understood by all that he would never be anything higher. Fifteen years ago when he produced his chef-d'oeuvre on Smollett his hopes had run high. At that time his fate hung in the balance. He could no longer be regarded as one of the "younger men," and his status was to be determined once and for all. The crowning glory of a Full Professorship could only go to one who had made some significant contribution to his subject. Would Tobias Smollett be that? Into it had gone all that Brainerd could give, and it had, after a brief and generally indifferent appearance in the reviews, dropped out of sight. Then it was recognized that good old Burt Brainerd would have to putter through life as best he could. Mr. Brainerd felt no particular bitterness about it, certainly no bitterness towards the College. He had been disappointed in his publisher. He should have gone to Beeson, Pancoast with it; instead of to Trull. Trull hadn't pushed it at all: they merely announced it with a string of books on very dull subjects. Then, too, they had used a cursed small type. He had protested against this and had been told that a larger type would have made it much more expensive, would probably have necessitated doing the work in two volumes. They had had the calm assurance to talk to him of expense when he had consented to waive his royalties on the first five hundred copies!—an exemption, by the way, which they had not yet succeeded in working off. Well, that had been his main chance, and he now watched the rise of younger men with equanimity. And it must be confessed that he got a certain amount of cold comfort from the remembrance that on three several occasions good things had come to him from out of the west, and that he need not have remained "assistant" had he not elected to do so.

Were it not for his wife, he might have become content. The library was a strong one, particularly in his field, and what more delightful end for a scholar than to browse at will in his period and write essays for the literary magazines? But Mrs. Brainerd chafed. Not having been a woman of means or of any particular position, she had been somewhat self-conscious in mixing with the great ones of the place. She had, at length, however, after a residence of nearly twenty years, decided that to live so was nothing; and she had boldly called upon Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee. She had found the great lady all charm and friendliness; but when, upon leaving, she had expressed the hope that Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee might be inclined to return her call, Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee had replied, "Thank you." "Is it 'Thank you, yes' or 'Thank you, no'?" the rash woman had persisted. To which Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee had bowed, "Well, since you insist, I'm afraid it will have to be 'Thank you, no.'" Mr. Brainerd had felt the snub perhaps more than his wife, although he was most convincing in reassuring her that upon trying again, say with some one of the Whitman family, there would be small danger of such a rebuff. Mrs. Brainerd, however, had not tried again and had, with what stoicism she could command, resigned herself to the path God had ordered for her feet. So Mr. Brainerd's end at Woodbridge was not a brilliant one, but he did not shrink or cry aloud, and it was generally recognized that dear old Burt Brainerd was a good sport.

The other Assistant Professor in Freshman English has already been mentioned—Jerome Furbush. He was a young man, a classmate of Henry Whitman, and rather intimate in consequence. He was, quite decidedly, a striking figure. Whereas the average member of the Faculty might have been taken for an ordinary business man in his working clothes, Furbush was obviously a man of temperament. Tall and lean, he had allowed his beard to grow into something of patriarchal proportions, or, more exactly, into one of those healthy spade-like growths which the French know so well how to develop. That it was a rich red only added to its distinction, and to his. He was noted for being a hard worker and a wit, but feeling about him was sharply divided. One could not be neutral; either one hailed him as a prophet and seer, or one hated him as an abandoned cynic, a vicious and arbitrary egoist whose presence in the community was a menace. There appeared to be evidence in support of either view. It was true that the Dean's office was frequently absorbed by problems of his making. He had a weakness, to illustrate, for calling his students liars and cheats upon, frequently, tenuous evidence; and the discussions that ensued were never amiable. On the other hand, a certain number of the most promising men in the class were invariably drawn to him and, taking up his battles, defended him against all detractors. The Permanent Officers had to admit that he got "results," but they shook their heads. Jerome Furbush was notoriously a "case."

Phil Meyers, instructor, had been graduated from a small western college and had taken his Ph.D. at a large eastern university. He was what is known as a "monographist," a thesis-writer; and it had become apparent to all that he was not long for the Woodbridge world. Word had repeatedly come through the somewhat devious channels of information that he was "no good." His classes were doing shockingly bad work and they were articulate in their disapproval of him. The coming June would close his first appointment, and it had been tactfully broken to him that he need not expect another.

Such was the personnel of the meeting in Mr. Dawson's office.

"I have called you together today, gentlemen," said Mr. Dawson after the preliminary pleasantries, "to consider the advisability of changing our course next year. It has been brought to my attention that there has been some criticism of the course as it now stands. Although," he continued, gazing at the blotter before him, "I could have wished that this criticism might have been made first to me, rather than have reached me indirectly, I am grateful for it at any time and welcome this opportunity for discussing it."

The air had become electrified. Everyone understood that the criticism referred to had come from only one source, Furbush, and that Dawson was administering to him a public rebuke. Dawson remained staring at his blotter when he finished, and there was complete silence for several seconds. "Well?" he asked, raising his eyes. "Don't hesitate, gentlemen. Although the course is largely of my making at present, there is no reason why it should remain so, and I'm sure no one will welcome an improvement more than I." Another pause. "Come, Jerry, won't you lead the discussion?"

Furbush, who seemed to be waiting to be thus addressed, rather than to presume to take the floor from his superior, Mr. Brainerd, smiled charmingly. "I should frankly wish," he said, "that the discussion be opened by one of you gentlemen, for I feel that my judgment in such a matter is possibly not of much value. I confess that I am not in as warm sympathy as any of you"—by singling out Meyers at this point he lent a quietly insulting tone to his remarks—"with the present course. Were it left to me, I should do away with Wordsworth, substituting, possibly, Swinburne. I have sometimes wondered if we weren't underestimating the potential strength of the Freshman's mind by feeding him on too much pap. By the same token I am inclined to think that I should drop Carlyle and Hawthorne for Matthew Arnold and, perhaps, Cardinal Newman." (Furbush was a High Churchman of a militant dye.) "What I should, of course, do would be to divide the present first term between Spenser and Milton, instead of giving it all to Shakespeare." This last was said directly to Dawson. It had been Mr. Dawson's particular joy that he could give one whole term to Shakespeare.

Tom was sitting keen-eyed and alert, but it would obviously be madness worse confounded to risk a contribution to this discussion, which was for Titans only. But he was thrilled by the duel before him, even though the outcome was never in doubt, since a show of hands would give a unanimous vote to Dawson whatever the issue. Mr. Dawson, however, declined the gage of battle altogether. He apparently merely wished Furbush to make public confession of the iniquity that was in him; and after noting out loud the changes recommended, he abruptly closed the meeting.

"Well, Jerry, we shall think over what you have said, and a week from today we'd better get together again and act on it. At that time, too, I wish you people would come prepared with your questions for the final examination paper." He looked around pleasantly at the little group. "I guess that will be all today," he said.

Tom had been nothing but a spectator at that meeting; but after the next he emerged radiant. The discussion of the first one had taken only a few minutes. It happened that Mr. Furbush was not able to be present; and it was announced incidentally, that he had been transferred to Sophomore English. Of his proposed changes nothing had been said, although another change was made. It appeared that Mr. Dawson had been teaching The Winter's Tale for the past six years and that he wished the Department's permission to drop it for Cymbeline. Mr. Dawson explained that he was getting a little stale on The Winter's Tale, and the change was hurriedly made.

What an object lesson was this for the keen-eyed young instructor! On the one hand was the Scylla of Mr. Brainerd and on the other was the Charybdis of Mr. Furbush. Lucky was he who could sail safely past the two; and he was a wise young instructor who determined to follow in the Dawsonian wake.

The final examination paper was then discussed; and Tom, who had come fully prepared and was extremely wide-awake, had contributed the "spot" passage in Wordsworth in its entirety—the couplet,

"A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet,"

was included—and he had, furthermore, lent a most constructive hand in the framing of the Carlyle-transcendental question—a performance which he retailed to Mrs. Norris at the earliest moment, and which made the Assistant Professorship and Nancy seem definitely within his grasp.



XII

Mrs. Norris was pleased with Tom's account of his success in the writing of the examination paper. Certain unsatisfactory rumours had come to her ears recently about his work. Henry Whitman, for example, had stated that Tom was loafing and that unless he picked up and showed improvement he might not receive a reappointment when his present term had expired. It is curious how everyone knows everyone else's business at Woodbridge. Each man has his grade stamped clearly upon him, for all, with the possible exception of the man himself, to see. A young man can raise this grade; and Mrs. Norris—who loved Tom almost as though he were her own—was hopeful for him.

"All he needs, Julian," she said to the Dean when she told him of Tom's triumph, "is a guiding hand. I can't do it, because I'm too old, but I know someone who can." She was "straightening out" the library at the time, and as she said this she gave a chair a shove with her knee, which sent it flying into the books on the wall.

"Mercy on us," cried the Dean, annoyed by this display of vigour, "who is it?"

"Nancy."

"Oh, pshaw, you're always trying to marry her off. You're the worst match-maker I know."

Mrs. Norris laughed quietly. "You wait and see," was all she said; but she had settled in her mind upon a picnic.

Mary, when approached upon the subject, had not been at all enthusiastic. "Why, it's much too early for a picnic," she had objected.

"It is not at all. Everything is three weeks early this year, and that makes it about the middle of May. We'll have a lovely moon, too. It will be grand." And she proceeded to invite the guests, Nancy and Tom, and Furbush, for it was true that he had been most attentive to Mary of late. Mrs. Norris at first refused to go, but Mary insisted.

"You will have to watch the fire, Gumgum, while we are off looking for sticks and things." And so she had gone, after all.

Mrs. Norris's ideas of a picnic were large, the heritage of a day that knew few tins and miraculous powders that bloom into omelettes. She scorned them and brought along a generous store of raw steak and bacon and potatoes. A picnic without a fire and roasting meat was too namby-pamby for words; and though she would not now undertake to cook the food herself, because of a certain eccentricity of the knee joints, and since her daughter, despite her domestic science, declined to do so, she had brought along Julia the cook. Nothing but the big limousine would do for such an undertaking, and, as it was, Furbush had to nurse the steak in his lap. Mrs. Norris would have reached the picnicking ground in a procession of buggies, but at that Mary protested so vigorously that she was forced to resign.

The picnic place was a pretty, slightly inaccessible rock overlooking a creek. Though actually not far from Woodbridge, as the road was overgrown and the turns sharp the motor had to proceed with a deliberation which made the trip justifiably difficult. The rock itself was about a hundred yards from the road; and since there was scarcely any path through the woods to it, there were made possible the pretty callings and hallooings, fallings-down and pickings-up, without which no picnic is quite perfect. Mrs. Norris, as a matter of fact, did more than her share of this. She had not gone more than thirty steps into the wood before she was completely lost; and by the time she had been safely brought to the rock her hat was well over on one side, her hair streaming down, and the torn fringe of her petticoat dragging along behind in the dirt. Julia and Horace, the chauffeur, however, had gone directly to the rock without the preliminary vagaries vouchsafed to their superiors, and by the time Mrs. Norris was finally captured they had succeeded in getting the supper well under way.

Upon her arrival Mrs. Norris announced her intention of roasting a potato.

"Gumgum, please sit down," begged her daughter. "You are only upsetting everything," and she laid an unfilial hand upon her mother's arm.

"I am going to roast a potato," Mrs. Norris cried, shaking herself free and seizing upon a pared potato. "Tommy, get me a stick."

"Isn't she awful," laughed Mary. "Don't you dare give her a stick, Tom." But Tom did dare, and Mrs. Norris, with her smiling benignity, stood waving the stick back and forth over the fire in time with the andante movement of her favourite Brahms sonata.

"Well, we might as well get ready to eat that old stuff," said Nancy to Furbush. "Don't you dread it?"

"I would not dread it, dear, so much, dreaded I not mother more," he replied, to Mary's intense gratification. But Tom, who heard the low-spoken words, thought them decidedly forced and disliked Furbush the more for them.

Furbush's presence was undoubtedly a drawback to Tom's pleasure. How could he be natural with a person whom he disliked as much as he did Furbush and who he knew disliked him? Besides, he did not feel like being sprightly and picnicky with Nancy beside him. Instead, he felt homesick, or at least that is the way it seemed to him. Still, how could it be genuine homesickness when the object of his yearning was beside him? Nevertheless, there had been in his thoughts recently the picture of a certain small colonial house in Tutors' Lane, a house now for rent or for sale. Possibly, however, the contrast of such a life—the house would be furnished with highboys and gate-leg tables and oval, woven mats—with his present one at Mrs. Ruddel's furnished him with a genuine case of homesickness, after all. How perfect would life be in such surroundings! He liked to think of breakfast: He and Nancy, alone, except, of course, for the pretty, efficient maid—at their mahogany breakfast table. Nancy, busy with the coffee things at one end and he at the other—no, at the side—tucking away his grapefruit and bacon and hot buttered muffins and jam in the last few minutes before he dashed off up the hill to his eight-thirty. Good heavens, what a life that would be! He saw Nancy with the morning light on her hair and her pleasant, lively face—the nose with only the faintest possible trace of powder—bending over his cup; and then he realized that he was gazing at her now in the same position, only with the sunset light in her hair, and with a white porcelain cup receiving the coffee out of a thermos bottle, instead of a china cup from a swelling-silver pot.

"Careful Tommy, you are dribbling it all over me."

"Oh, Nancy, I'm so sorry. I ask you, isn't that stupid. Please excuse me."

"A little lemon or a hot iron or soap and water will fix it, probably," said Furbush.

Tom looked over at Furbush. He hated his liquid tones, like honey dripping on a blue plush sofa. "How the hell do you get that way?" he wanted to ask—then he rounded out the sentence with certain phrases which had been current among our heroes along all war fronts from Kamchatka to Trieste. Even a milder remark was happily averted, for at this point the potato which Mrs. Norris had been steadily roasting, burst into flame and had to be plunged into the fire; a grateful accident, for now she was willing to sit down on the camp stool brought for her and to confine herself to the slicing of the bread.

What passed until the meal was finished was of slight significance. It was a decidedly detached party, the two couples being brought together chiefly through Mrs. Norris; and when Nancy and Tom had finished a banana which they had divided in the jolly picnic way, Tom stood up. "Do you realize," he asked Nancy, "that this is a wishing carpet we've been sitting on? Let's take it down by the creek and see where it will take us."

"Oh, dear," said Mrs. Norris, not at all displeased. "And now where are you and Mary going?"

"We're going to look for crocuses in the garden of the Queen of the Fairies," replied Furbush. "They ought to be up now."

"Well, take along this flashlight: it's getting awfully bosky-wosky in there." And then Mrs. Norris was left alone with Julia, whom she entertained with an animated and brilliant account of Titania and Oberon.

"Where shall we go?" asked Tom when they were seated on the magic motor rug.

"Let's go to Libya!" said Nancy promptly.

"Libya! Well, I suppose we might as well go there as anywhere. You realize, of course, that we won't go until I put my foot on the carpet"—his left foot was straggling over the edge.

"Perhaps you'd better keep it there for a few minutes, then, until we are sure that we really want to go. As a matter of fact, I think it is rather nice right here in Woodbridge," and she smiled up at him.

Nancy had, of course, smiled upon a great many young men without precipitating a proposal of marriage, but then, the young men had probably not woven her image into their future hopes and fears as thoroughly as he had. Also the hour and the place lent their potency to her smile. The soft spring evening, happily extended by Daylight Saving, the noisy little creek running by their feet, and the staunch ally of all such projects, the great round moon, all combined to weave a spell, just as Mrs. Norris planned that they should.

Tom had come to the picnic prepared to speak his mind, not doubting that an opportunity would be given him. He had not memorized a speech, but was ready to trust to the inspiration of the moment. His cause was an honest one; he might expect the gift of tongues, but the starting gun had now been fired, the race was on, and he was not granted the gift of tongues. A little preparation might not have been amiss, after all.

"I agree with you about Woodbridge. In fact, I think had rather go on living here than anywhere else in the world, provided one thing." He had plunged in without the gift of tongues.

It was not so dark but that Tom could see the colour come into her face. "Provided what, Tom?"

"Provided I can have you, Nancy. Provided you can love me as I love you." He had come nearer her, and although he had brought both feet upon the magic carpet, they remained stationary. "You mean more to me than anything I have ever known. I used to wonder how I could ever think more of anyone than I thought of Woodbridge and the Star and the different boys in college, but that was nothing compared to this." Nancy was tracing a series of geometrical patterns upon the magic carpet with a bit of stick. "I wish I could do something to show you how much I care now." Still Nancy said nothing. "And, oh, Nancy, what you could do for me! With you to help me, I think I could do anything. But I know I need you. Nancy, will you marry me?"

Nancy was hardly prepared for this. She had, since the social service fiasco, acknowledged to herself that she had grown in that short space very fond of Tom. She looked forward to seeing him, and when he was gone she went over with pleasure what he had said and how he had looked. She liked his drollery and his strength, she admired his poise and self-reliance; and she had the greatest respect for his teaching ability, of which she had received direct proof. Still, she was not at all sure that she wished to marry him. After all, she had really known him only something over a month, and it was not the Whitman way to hurry into anything—least of all into matrimony.

"You mustn't ask me that, Tom."

"Why not, Nancy?"

"Because I cannot accept; not now."

"You mean that perhaps you can later? For of course I shall never grow tired of asking you."

The moon had climbed a little and had turned a silvery yellow. It flooded the rock and the people moving about on it, but Nancy and Tom remained in shadow. "Tell me, Nancy," he said, leaning over and covering with his own the hand upon which she was resting, "tell me that I may ask you again, for, dear Nancy, I cannot lose you." She did not draw her hand away immediately and when she did so she did it gently.

"You're awfully good, Tom," she said and Tom's heart swelled at the softness of her tone. Then she climbed to her feet, and—Tom picking up the magic carpet, which had become soaked through with the dampness of the creek bank—they made their way back to the rock.

And so ended their first love scene. That Tom's behaviour will appear tepid, in these vigorous days, is to be feared. His own contemporaries, of both sexes, will almost certainly be the first to point out that had they been in his place nothing would have kept them from proceeding from the tame seizure of Nancy's hand to some bolder action. Tom, however, helping Nancy along over the rocks and sticks was happily oblivious of his unconventionality. The beauteous evening did, in very truth, seem calm and free to him, though the party on the rock was making a little too much noise to have the holy time quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration. His mind turned to the scrap of Wordsworth he had lately memorized, and though he was a trifle annoyed to find that he couldn't, even now, perhaps when he most wanted it, remember all, the phrase "comfort and command" stayed with him and did nicely for the whole.



XIII

Tom telephoned to Mrs. Norris the next day to make certain that he might see her. He felt that she was an ally in the matter of Nancy, and it was important to get her advice.

He found her knitting by the yellow lamp in the library. "Well, Tommy dear," she said, looking at him with a quizzical smile, "was the picnic a success?"

"Mrs. Norris, you are wonderful. When I think how much I owe to your generation. After all, I think a woman is loveliest at fifty."

"Oh, flatterer!"

"But you know you cannot get that fine savoir vivre before."

"Oh dear me, how much more savoir vivre I'll have when I'm eighty. What an old charmer I'll be then! Will you come to see me when I'm eighty, Tommy?"

"What a question!"

"Well, I hope you won't take me off on any old wishing carpet and put me down in a damp, horrid place and give me tonsilitis."

"Who has tonsilitis?"

"Nancy, of course, and you gave it to her, you bad thing."

Tonsilitis! He remembered now the damp rug and also certain sniffles that had required, from time to time on the homeward trip, the administration of a diminutive handkerchief with a pretty "N" embroidered, he knew, in the corner. So that is the way he would look after her!

"What can I do about it?" It was true that Mrs. Norris was taking it very calmly.

"Do? Why, you can't do anything but wait until she gets over it. You might go and see her when she begins to pick up."

"I caught cold myself." He had at least been true to that extent.

"Are you doing anything for it? Remind me when you go, and I'll give you some Squim. It's something new, and it did wonders for Mary."

"Don't you think it might be nice for me to send Nancy some?" asked Tom, laughing. Tonsilitis was seldom fatal, after all; and what an excellent excuse to visit her it would be when she was getting better!

"Tommy, dear, haven't you something to tell me?"

"No, not really."

"Not anything?"

"Well, hardly anything." He was sitting near her, and now he leaned forward and whispered, "I asked her to be my wife, and she refused." It was not said, however, in the tone one would expect for such an unhappy message. Mrs. Norris looked at him curiously. "She said she couldn't answer me now, but as good as gave me permission to ask her again—and when a girl talks that way, isn't it as good as settled?"

It did look promising, certainly. But then, there was Henry. "What about Henry?" she asked. "How does he feel?"

"What has he to do with it?"

"Oh my, he has a lot to do with it. He's more than just a brother, you know. He's her father and mother."

"And aunt, maiden aunt, as well."

Mrs. Norris laughed. "Henry's to be reckoned with, though, just like Marshal Ney—or was it Cincinnatus? I never can remember."

"But, Mrs. Norris, what am I to do?"

"Why, you must just be very nice and thoughtful to Nancy and as decent as you can be to Henry, and pray the Good Lord will help you."

"Will you pray for me, too?" Tom had played too much baseball not to appreciate the value of organized cheering.

"Yes, I'll pray for you." And then Tom jumped up and planted a thoroughgoing kiss—which was designed for the cheek, but which, upon her turning quickly, was delivered, in a manner that even Leofwin would have applauded—upon her neck.

* * * * *

On the sixth day Nancy sat up for a while during Miss Albers' hour and a half off. There was an abutment at one end of her room which overlooked the Whitman garden and carried the eye on down the hill until it rested on the factory in Whitmanville—the factory which made the garden possible for her. There was a letter in her lap from Tom. It had come with his roses and it asked her to go with him to the boat race. There was also a book in her lap, but she made no effort to read it; it was so much easier just to gaze out of the window and let her mind wander where it would.

Henry knocked and entered. "Well, this is very nice. Do you really feel a lot better?"

"Ever so much, thank you. I think probably I'll get up in a day or two."

"I suppose you'll want your tonsils out now, won't you?" The question of a tonsilectomy had been a moot one for years. Nancy had always been anxious to have them out, having been told that it was merely a case of "snip, snip, and a day on ice cream." Henry, who regarded tonsilectomy skeptically as a fad, and who knew, furthermore, that it was a major operation for adults and that old Mrs. Merton hadn't walked straight since she had had hers out, was strongly opposed. This had, in fact, been an exceedingly sore point with them, and the amount of unhappiness engendered by it was considerably in excess of that which would have resulted from an operation when it was first suggested.

"I'll have to wait, of course, until I get well over this. It isn't like a rheumatism, you know." Nancy had learned the jargon thoroughly.

Well, that subject was now disposed of, and Henry, with the directness of a trained economist, abruptly went into the main object of his call. There had been certain features about Nancy's delirium which had astonished and annoyed him, and he had come with the express purpose of discussing them should he find Nancy strong enough. He now decided that she was strong enough. "Do you realize that when your fever was high you talked at a great rate?" he asked.

"I vaguely remember mumbling and grumbling."

Henry did not relish his task, but he felt it to be his duty—and Henry had never been one to shirk his duty. "You talked a great deal about this Tom Reynolds," he said.

"Yes?" Nancy was aware that she coloured. She was aware also of a sudden sinking sensation, not dissimilar to the one that comes from a too rapid drop in an elevator. So Henry had come to her at the first possible moment to protest against "this Tom Reynolds." "He has had a bad recitation," she thought, "and now he is going to take it out on me," and then she called her brother a hard and inelegant name, as people will when angry with their dearest relatives. Had Nancy been of a satirical nature she might have made something of her brother's adoption of Freudian methods; but she was not, and she knew only direct-fire warfare.

"Nancy," Henry went on, leaning towards her, "surely you are not in love with that man?"

Had Tom been a head hunter with tin cans in his ears, Nancy would have loved him at that moment.

"Yes, I am," she said.

Henry stared at her. It was clear she meant what she said. Then he glanced at the letter and the book that lay in her lap, as people will notice small things at such times. He guessed in whose handwriting the letter was, and—the book was Sonnets from the Portuguese! She had even taken to sentimental rubbish!

"Oh Nancy, can't you see that he is not worthy of you? Who are his people? Where is he from? I wouldn't give that for his future here. He's lazy, and he's filled you up on a lot of poetry. Nancy, think well of it before it's too late." She was gazing out the window, hardly hearing him. She had confessed aloud, before Henry, that she loved Tom. Henry was going on. "If you won't think of yourself, perhaps you can think of Henry Third? What is to become of him if you go?"

Nancy turned to look at him. She felt giddy now, and she thought she was going to cry. It would not do, however, to make a scene, when up to this point she had acquitted herself so well. "You mean that I should give up my life to look after your son?"

"Please don't be melodramatic. We know one another so well it isn't necessary. I am not asking you to give up your life. I am asking you not to throw it away, and in the meantime you have certain definite obligations here. You are more than an aunt to Henry. Life here with him will be far better for you than being the wife of that uncertain boy."

She allowed it to pass, but it gave the final flick to her anger. "You are the kind of person, Henry, who is so monumentally selfish that you think everybody who dares to cross you in any way is himself monumentally selfish too. Now you come to me in a protective role to save me from 'this Tom Reynolds' with a mass of ill-natured slander—and lies—because if I go to him you will have to get a new housekeeper."

"Nancy—"

"Don't interrupt me, please. It would be the same, no matter who came. You would find some dreadful fault in anyone. You always have been jealous of every man that ever came here and if you had your way you would keep me here for life." Nancy paused, but her brother did not offer to speak. She had asked not to be interrupted, and he would be quite sure that she was through before he spoke again, but he could not conceal his anger. Nancy noticed it, and her own anger increased. "I don't think I'd mind it so much, if you didn't pretend that it was all for my good. That is nothing but rank hypocrisy. Just what have you ever done to make my life pleasant here? You are never interested in what I'm interested in, outside of Harry. This lecture business you just laughed and sneered at. I admit it was ridiculous, but you wouldn't lift your finger to make it less so. I admit, also, that I would appreciate a little attention once in a while, but it would never occur to you to give me any pleasure unless you had to, to get some for yourself. When you really want to give me a good time you sit down and talk to me about your miserable old Labour class and what a wonderful lecture you gave them. Well, Henry, that time is past, and I am going to have my own life from now on." And the tears which she had been fighting back were no longer to be denied.

Henry was entirely put out, and he awkwardly got up. Now was clearly not the time to renew the attack. Nothing that Nancy had said was of the slightest significance, except her lack of interest in his work. There, indeed, was a sorry confession of inability to forget herself in the greatest interest of her nearest relation. Poor wilful girl! Well, he had done his duty. No one could charge him with unbrotherliness.

Nancy had also got up. "Please go away," she sobbed; and Henry, without further word, did so.

Nancy crawled back into bed and had her cry out. What a brute he was—and what a god was Tom! What a miserable snob Henry was about family—and then for him to say that Tom had no future! Had Tom been a member of his wretched old Grave, he would have had a very different view of it. That was the cause of nine-tenths of his dislike, anyway. Tom was in the rival club and Henry never could see any good in anyone connected with it. What a miserable, juvenile business! Had not Tom frankly confessed his need of help? Henry had never in any way indicated that she could be of service to him, except to order his meals and keep him comfortable. But Tom had thrown himself upon her. He "needed" her—that had been his word. With her to help him he felt that he could do anything. What a career for a girl! That would be living indeed.

She thought of his unanswered letter and climbed out of bed at once. "Dear Tom," she wrote, and again the tears came into her eyes, "Thank you so much for the lovely flowers. They are by my bed and I can enjoy them all day long. It is awfully nice of you to ask me to the Boat Race and I accept with pleasure. I don't think there will be any question about my being able to make it. In two weeks I should be perfectly well again.

"It will be lovely to see you and I can do so at any time now.

"As ever, "NANCY."

The final draft of the letter was composed only after three preliminary ones. Nancy found it extremely difficult to get just the right tone. She couldn't put too much warmth into it, and yet it mustn't be too cold. So she sat at her desk, copying and recopying, and only succeeded in finishing it when Miss Albers returned.

"I've done it at last," she announced proudly, her cheeks aflame. Miss Albers, fortunately one of the few surviving members of the Good Nurse family, saw the situation immediately.

"Why, I see you have," she said. "Isn't that fine! Now I think you are entitled to a nice nap." And when Tom arrived, post-haste upon receipt of Nancy's note, he was met at the front door with the news of her relapse.



XIV

When Tom reached the Whitman house on the day of the race, he found it full. He had seen Nancy only once since her illness; and as her room had then been filled with people, his call was not remarkable. He had not failed to notice, nevertheless, that the colour came into her face as he entered the room; and there had been other auspicious signs which had had an exciting effect upon his pulse. This call had been made only two days before the race, and it was then clear that Nancy could not go with him. A Philadelphia cousin had, however, announced her arrival—a particular friend of hers being in the Woodbridge boat—and would Tom mind taking her? Uncle Bob Whitman had wonderful seats, being an Overseer, but he wasn't going to be able to use them, and—of course Tom would be only too happy to take her.

Nancy, pale and lovely, was serving tea, but she found time to thank him again for his goodness about the Philadelphia cousin, and then she took him over to be presented. On the way across the room they passed Henry. Tom, who stared at him, missed the tell-tale blush on Nancy's cheeks. Instead, he only saw Henry shift his eyes calmly from Nancy to him and bow coldly. Tom bowed as coldly in his turn, and then Nancy left him with the Philadelphia cousin.

Lily Griffin, the Philadelphia cousin, gazed at him steadily from under the floppy expanse of her black hat. She was sitting on a low cane covered bench before the fireplace, and her legs, which were encased in light grey silk stockings and which terminated in slippers of the same colour, her legs, let it be relentlessly repeated, were the most conspicuous things in the room. Over her shoulders were the thin strings of an undergarment that Tom thought was generally concealed. Still, one couldn't be at all sure about such things from one day to the next.

"Would you mind taking my cigarette?" she asked, handing him the stub.

"So you know Platt Raeburn," he began amiably when he had returned from his pretty task.

"Yes."

"He's an awfully nice boy. I know him quite well." Platt was in the Star; and Lily, who knew a great deal about such things, immediately suspected that Tom was also. How else would a professor know a crew star "quite well"? Her interest in Tom rose. He had, as a matter of fact, attractive eyes; and that cerise-coloured knitted tie with a pearl stickpin might indicate much.

"Platt is a nice boy, isn't he?" she continued with a shade more enthusiasm. "We went on the most wonderful party this Easter. He wasn't in training then, you know, and I have never seen any one funnier than he was. We were at the Greysons' in Ardmore, and Platt thought he was insulted by the butler when he took Platt's cigarette off a table and threw it in the fire. It was burning the table, but old Platt didn't know that, and he knocked the man down."

"It must have been funny," said Tom, who had heard the story before.

"Oh, it was a scream. I thought I'd die laughing. It was really awfully bad of him, though, don't you think?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Tom boldly. "I don't think it was so very bad. You've got to expect that sort of thing nowadays."

"Mercy, I didn't think you'd say that. Aren't you a professor here, or something?"

"Yes, something."

"Well, but I always thought——"

"What?" with a smile.

"Oh, nothing. Say, just between you and I, don't you think this is rather slow?" and she gave him a look that showed he was making good.

The hospitality they were accepting was, of course, his own Nancy's, and to be strictly honourable he should have defended everything, but with certain definite reservations in his mind he replied, "Deadly."

"That dreadful old creature over there actually eyed me when I smoked that last cig." The dreadful old creature was Mrs. Conover, who found it difficult to reconstruct herself to the present century. "I should think it would be awfully stupid living here. Now, isn't it really?"

"No, it isn't half bad."

"Oh, I can see you're a highbrow, like all the rest of them. Personally, I couldn't stand it. I'm too independent, I guess. What a sweet dog." Clarence was before her, arrayed in the Woodbridge colours. "I love dogs. I've the sweetest little Boston bull bitch at home. She won a silver flask for me last year." She was examining Clarence with the eye of a practised dogwoman. "Do you know anything about Airedales?" Tom didn't. "I suspect his tail is wrong," she said. "Now run along, sweetie," she called to Clarence; "momma can't have a baby with wrong tail." Clarence received this incredulously, but a complication was averted by the arrival of Nancy. "We were just criticizing your dog, my dear. Why don't you have his tail fixed?"

"Why, what's the matter with it?" asked Nancy. She hated the thought of anything having happened to Clarence.

"Why, it's too long. You should have two inches at least cut off." The picture of Clarence going around with his tail done up in a bandage was a delightful one, and Nancy laughed.

Lily appealed to Tom. "Isn't she heartless?" But before Tom could answer the slightly embarrassing question, the cruel one announced that they had better be on their way, as the race started at five and it was then half-past four. So they hustled into the Whitman motor and drove to Center, where the new observation train was already filling.

The race with Hartley was always one of the great spring events, but the new observation train made it more of an event than ever. People gloated over it as though they had never seen a train before, much to the amusement of Lily, whose attendance at New London had been frequent. Many paused admiringly at the engine and, as they passed on up the line of a dozen cars, loudly proclaimed their admiration of the entire arrangement. "They are just like prairie schooners," said one young man, to Lily's huge delight, for she had never before seen so much provincialism all at once. The platform was thick with people rushing to find their cars at the last minute. All was hurry and excitement and colour and laughter. The orange of Woodbridge and the olive of Hartley were everywhere. Each person boldly displayed his colours, whether with flowers or feathers, and it was clear that earth had few greater pleasures than this. Then the engine tooted and rang its bell, and with a convulsive wrench they were off, amid the cheers of everyone.

Tom and his Lily were seated between the Hartley cheering section and the Woodbridge cheering section, in the very choice seats which Mr. Whitman naturally commanded and Tom, although he thought boat racing a much overrated sport and resented its being preferred to baseball, felt a distinct thrill as they passed out upon the river bank and up to the starting point. Only the cold unseasonable wind which swept down the course, riffling the water and chilling every one to the bone, marred the day.

They arrived at the starting point, and the occupants of the new cars wrapped what little they had around them. Quite obviously, the race could not be rowed until the wind died. There was nothing to do but just sit and wait.

The Hartley cheering section immediately climbed down upon the bank, with the exception of one young man who was left with his head lolling over the side of the car next to Tom. Friendly remonstrance had been futile. He had refused to move and had elected to slumber. "I think he's sweet," said Lily, gazing over at him. "Tell me, do you have much trouble getting liquor here?"

"No," said Tom. Already the spell of the day was wearing off.

"I've learned, to my sorrow that you can't be too careful. Such a time as I had last month! I went out to a luncheon party—May Stephens—you know her? Well, just before luncheon I was astonished to see cocktails appear. I didn't think May had any stock, but there she was just the same, jiggling the shaker up and down. Well, at the first sip I thought something was funny, but there was nothing to do about it; and then May gave me a dividend, and although it nearly killed me, I managed to get it down, and then when we were all through she asked us how we liked it. Well, I told her I thought it was a little funny, and then she announced what I knew all along; that she had made it herself. 'I made it out of spirits of nitre,' she said. 'Did you boil off the ether?' someone asked, and she said she hadn't! Well, we hadn't got hardly started at lunch when one of the girls passed right straight out and then we all began feeling trembly and queer, and then the next thing I knew I was at home in bed, and I wasn't up and about for a week. Wasn't that awful?"

Tom's enthusiasm was ebbing fast. What a prodigious bore this race was going to be! The wind was blowing up his legs, and his light spring overcoat was far from ample. The seats were too close together and were of a granite hardness; but he and Lily were wedged into the back and could not escape without treading upon the toes of half of Woodbridge's notables. So he sat still and tried to smile brightly at the conclusion of her story.

"Do you know?" Lily continued, "I think you have a lovely smile."

"Goody," replied Tom, and smiled again, this time rather archly.

Lily was examining him between half closed lids. "And I think you have nice eyes, too—particularly the lashes. They are so long and silky."

"Well, it's a great secret, of course," replied Tom, "and you mustn't tell even your mother"—Lily giggled—"but I think you have the prettiest way with you I have ever seen."

"Oh, dear me, you are funny. Now you must keep me warm."

The car, it has been pointed out, was full of Woodbridge notables, and any warming of the young lady would not have been looked upon with favour. Nor would Tom have cared to warm her had they been quite alone at the North Pole. What an ordeal this was getting to be, and how lucky was Nancy, comfortably seated before the fire! How good would that particular fire be, and what a soft and fragrant place to ask a certain question! What a contrast Nancy made to this miserable girl beside him! Nancy at the time happened to be repairing certain ravages that the tea had made upon her nephew's best blue suit, but the scheme of Tom's thoughts was not spoiled.

"Bad man, you're not showing me any kind of a time."

Tom was exasperated. A group in front of them had built a fire. "How would you like to go down there?" he asked. "Can you climb down over the side here?"

"'Course I can."

Tom climbed over the railing, dropped to the ground, and, turning his ankle, cried "Ouch!" loudly enough to waken the young Hartley man whose head was lolling over the adjacent railing. The youth looked up and beheld the lovely Lily poised, apparently preparing to fly into his arms. He reared himself up. "Come, lovely girl," he cried, "I love you." And then as she swooped by, he made a grab at her and tore her dress.

"You bad boy," she cried, with little discretion, "you tore my dress."

"You bad boy," repeated the young Hartley man, "yuhtoradress, yuhtoradress."

Tom had managed to hurry her away, although his ankle hurt him considerably, but not until all the notables had seen the performance. What a mortifying affair. No doubt many supposed that he was the one who had torn the dress.